


Everything Sparkles Under A Chandelier

by itsnotasecret



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Boys In Love, Cargos & ships, Falling excrutiatingly in love, First Kiss, First Love, Fluff, Gay Sex, M/M, Modern Royalty, Past moments entwined with present day, References to weed, Sailor crew, Set in Copenhagen, Time Travel, quirky coffee shops sneak peeking at each other, shimmering lakes in moonlight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-31
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-05-30 07:14:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 39,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6414115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsnotasecret/pseuds/itsnotasecret
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After pub crawling the Danish-German border with the great-great-grandson of fairy tale author H.C. Andersen, Harry ends up in Copenhagen (with the dimmest of interest for its theater scene), finds himself drunk on Label 5, sneaking glances at the Prince of Denmark by a rundown harbourside and plans his life by way of star constellations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. sparkling wine

_I wish I could tell you_

_of a story you’ve never heard before_

_with a kind of love, a kind of ending,_

_chemistry_

_no one has ever known_

_and hope you’d listen_

_with a cup of tea_

_with tucked up feet and bite of lip_

_and fill in the middle for me_

_because I can’t write it_

_alone_

_I can’t tell it_

_yet_

_and if you can explain the ins and outs_

_of evil and sincerity_

_and rebellion and endurance_

_and the reasons for which you laugh_

_I’ll tell you of a story_

_no one knows who wrote_

 

                                                                                                   

**July 29th, 2016**

 

It had been a summer's day for most people, besides for those on the other side of earth, and those more north and those more south.

To Harry Styles, for instance, this was a day shrouded in rain the size of straws.

 

His eyes digested the oval stone entrance before him. A humongous theatre glistened from the centre inside with cockled surplus of red drapes dazzling the stage. Golden throws adorned the velvety ends.

Tin table after tin table littered with fine, ancient Möet as attested by the mirroring, crystalline stemware. The walls were a showcase of state officials, royals, scions and plummies alike. Everyone could see it was spectacular. It must be spectacular. It _is_ spectacular, his mind forced. The soft carpeting served as a buffer to the shouts of a flock of stiffly clad children. It only echoed dull and faint. Like the rain.

Harry, in black jeans that appeared to be painted on his skin and a shirt of envious green, wasn’t dressed for the show. 

By sheer luck, he'd caught Haakon - a brown haired, anonymous Dane at the time - cursing loudly at a metro's time tables. Those dimwit Danish time tables. They could might as well have been in Mandarin, at least Harry'd known five words then, and he'd murmured just that nonchalantly at Haakon's back. Haakon had recently backpacked Venezuela, it turned out, and hence sympathized with Harry’s situation. Though Harry wouldn’t be long. He had other places to be. He wasn’t sure for how long it would go on for, nor did he care.

It had hit him lightning-like halfway down a bottle of goon in the Australian outback. The sky was jet-black with golden arrowed shootings of stars and he’d been at one with it. Rather than surrendering, he turned recalcitrant. Alive. Whatever made up the stars made up Harry too, along with everything he saw, even everything he felt. Shortly after, a night train from Munich to Copenhagen had stripped his last penny out of him, causing him to work for accommodation in Copenhagens seediest hostels, falling asleep each night 'neath a moth-eaten blanket in the world’s happiest country (per 2016).

Roving the world by train, bus, ferries and unsecured tuk-tuks, he'd been on the go like this for more or less a decade. It was perhaps more obvious to him than anyone else how the meaning of life was merely a concotion of loving and being loved back, getting drunk and getting sad, exploring fulfilling pastimes and collecting enough debt to get tax relief.

 

“Listen, have you noticed anything weird about our Billy lately?” 

“What are you after like, a list?”

 

He relaxed the muscles around his eyes, unaware they‘d been tense.

They sat on third row with excellent view of the violin orchestra and direct sight of the stage. Personally, he didn't prefer this type of event but Haakon got annual tickets due to his mother prepping costumes backstage. 

The saxophones and flutes sparkled like mirrors of bursting stars, or grenades, accentuated by the blitz off the expectant ensemble. In front of him sat what Harry could only imagine to be royalty, or upper state-men, politicians and their wives and their mistresses, all shining like polished rocks; the most valuable of stones the world could offer, smiling easily at each other because what cares in the world existed, really? They had all the money in the world (or something like it), had just had entrecote for dinner (he assumed), and they’d be driving off in even shinier Cadillac’s or Mercedes’s or Bentley’s or Audi’s.   

Now the lights dimmed. The first tone will hit like a pin in a silent room. Sporadic guilt washed over Harry. Had his hair reached the kind of messiness where the person behind him couldn't see everything? Was he robbing someone off their experience? He tousled it slightly to the left. It had grown so unruly over the summer. The autumn drizzle and the succeeding winter air wouldn’t really ease it further; it would practically bounce with his steps anytime now. Any of these days.

 

“I don't want a childhood. I want to be a ballet dancer!”

 

A young pair giggled at the front row. They whispered into each other’s ear, legs swinging back and forth with hands neatly tucked in their laps. It looked juvenile, considering their age.

 

“You don't fancy me, do you, Mrs. Wilkinson?”

“No, Billy. Funnily enough, I don't. Now piss off!” 

The boy portraying Billy could’ve passed for a Peter Pan. He had that pixie, boyish charm of someone quick witted and passionate. Not yet knowing the limits of things, nor apt to be courteous and polite with people adhering those limits.

 

“And suddenly I’m flying! Flying like a bird!” 

 

The lights switched to a soft hue of blue, swallowing the orchestra and actors and mikes. Darkness glossed the front row. Now they appeared to be of a different world, where the sky was very different, and very much closer.

The seated girl had long ash-blonde, spaghetti-twirled ringlets, the boy tufts of amber hair that coiled around his earlobe and neck, much like the trees alongside roads in London, grown to encapsulate the roads yet leaving perfect room for the double-deckers. The only thing extrinsic about him was the cap on his head, which seemed rather odd on a front row lined with pearl necklaces and Chanel No. 5. Harry couldn’t make out his attire.

 

Billy sprinted across the stage.

 

“Jesus Christ, Billy Elliot! You're a disgrace to them gloves, your father, and the traditions of this boxing hall!” 

 

It was then he turned around.

 

“So, what's it like?” 

“What's what like?”

“London.” 

“I don't know, son. I never made it past Durham.”

“Have you never been?” 

“Why would I want to go to London?” 

“It's the capital city!”

“Well, there are no mines in London.” 

“Jesus Christ, is that all you think about?” 

 

His eyes were blue, too, as well as the tip of his nose and the fringe wisped across his forehead. A shadow obscured his face. The spotlight roamed on to Billy who leaned against a requisite, right hip tilted slightly to the side.

 

“Tony, do you ever think about death?” 

“Fuck off.” 

*****

 

Harry squeezed between a man with a bulging beer belly and a woman adorned with a blue charmeuse shawl and four different gemstone rings. They shone sapphire, onyx, ruby and emerald. His throat hummed a sigh.

Haakon'd gone queuing for pints, and Harry assessed the pub a peculiar mash of lorry drivers and glitz - the majority of the Billy-goer ensemble trickling in to finish the evening off with local brews.

The joint stood adjacent a small bodega with barrels for tables and a petite, lit fireplace - its glass door veered wide open towards a set of crooked stone steps that lead out to the jumble of cobblestone pathways.

A jolly, older song rung from the jukebox.

 

It was weird, Harry noted, sitting in one pub and gazing right into another.

 

_"You can dance every dance with the guy who gives you the eye, let him hold you tight …"_

 

Haakon returned with two lagers in hand, and droplets gravitating down his underarms. He'd texted a pair of his mates to join on their walk there, and one of them pulled the Gothic iron doorbell to alarm their presence just as Harry took grip of the icy pint.

“British!” One of the boy's singsang, juggling in next to Harry. “Harry, is it? I’m Jonas. How long you in town for then?”

The posh lady beside Harry had gotten enough at that stage, huffing and puffing to leave with her snakeskin purse clutched tight.

“Harry, yeah. Uhm, I’m thinking two weeks.”

“Brit, are ya?” The other quizzed, bringing forth a silver hip flask of Norse engravings. Both boys had sharp cuts to their hair, and wore jovial grins. 

“Norfolk.”  

“Me dad’s from Brighton. Great country. Mum’s a Dane, though. ‘m Mick.”

“He’s a sailor, too.” Haakon pitched in. “Got back from from the Ivory Coast on … Thursday, was it?”

“Can’t take solid ground.” Mick only shrugged and swilled the dregs, clearing his throat with an, _ah_. “Gonna get whiskey, anyone want some?”

His eyes hopped from Harry to Jonas to Haakon, then rushing off as they gave a unison nod. 

 

_"You can smile every smile for the man who held your hand ‘neath the pale moonlight …"_

 

“So, Harry. Haakon mentioned you’ve worked at cargos for nearly all of your life? Fascinating, man.” Harry's bilingual abilities sensed a sweet admiration for the Dane's attempt at melting his strong accent with American slang. “I’m a cobbler myself up by Vesterbro. Always wanted to see the world, though. California, to be specific.”

“It’s amazing,” Harry said. It was barely audible above all the chatter and music. “The world’s great.” He straightened his back to gain posture and give a shot at sincerity, though the motion only made it come off more sarcastic.

Their conversations flowed on, though, and not until 11:45 PM did they split for their respective flats. The beer had been nice, Harry allowed. And Haakon was the type he'd consider meeting again, as well as the two lads.

The lights from the kiosks and company billboards flashed his way along the streets, shades of lake-blue to blood red functioning as Harry’s guideposts.

 

In mid-saunter through the intersection of Amagerbrogade and Amager Boulevard he was alerted the presence of a group of boys, maybe his own age, scurrying across the streets and causing a taxi driver to honk and a bus to break.

_Obnoxious._

A boy in front seemed the fastest, making it a task to mount every signpost with arms flung wide at the sky. “Kom igen, nu, drenger!”

He did a stop let the traffic come through-dance, and Harry heard them all laugh. Like they had fun. Like they wanted to live. Wanted life.

Something nudged in his ear, or in the sack of his eyes; something that happened in vivid motion. In reality. It surprised him just how loud he heard things, how the alcohol had mixed with his bloodstream so easily. Shouldn’t his body hold more barriers?

A person clutched an arm around the boy’s shoulder and skittered with him. Half a bottle of Koskenkorva spilled down the boy’s collarbones.

The boy, like everyone else, was beneath a protruding constellation of Pegasus. It was that kind of sky. A clear cut one. Luckily, no matter where Harry went or who he was with or what he felt, there was a night sky above him. Even in the middle of a bright day, one star still shun intensely close. That alone was Harry's anchor. It was never sunny. It was starry.   

 

"Sinke!" The loud and obnoxious boy belted at his friends before breathing heavily.

Harry peeked up at the unexpected silence.

His mates had passed him now - calling for him. He stood in the casing of a thick fog that made the lights dank, caused the colours to vane. His face to blur.

“Kommer nu.”

And he ran away.

 

- 

 

   

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from lyric in Save The Last Dance For Me by The Drifters, which is the song playing in the pub. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-XQ26KePUQ)
> 
> //Oh I know that the music is fine  
> like sparkling wine,  
> go and have your fun
> 
> Laugh and sing but while we're apart  
> don't give your heart  
> to anyone//
> 
> (This entire story is dreamt up while listening to an acoustic Royals version while slightly intoxicated)  
> Anchor credit: http://www.jonlansberg.com/Illustration.html


	2. abandon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning.

_BREAKING NEWS_

**_14-year-old Niels William Louis Alexander XVIII, Prince of Denmark, has been missing since yesterday afternoon when he never returned from school._ **

_The Danish Royal Family and the Danish government are sending a plea to whoever may know something about the disappearance. Every airport and boarder point has been informed. The King and Queen of Denmark ask coast guards across the globe to be particularly alert, saying the brown haired 5.4ft Prince Niels William, Louis by friends, loved to spend time at the harbour in Copenhagen, and that he spoke stubbornly of sailing the seas with someone he’d met there. Unfortunately, no one in the Royal family knows of who this may be. They say the Prince preferred to visit the harbour alone, where he had a friend who was ‘only his.’_

 

 

**October 21st, 2005**

 

A foghorn blew alarming and shrill through the 4 o’clock air.

Somewhere not too far away, a little boy – or rather, he preferred to be termed a young adult, 13 and all – pulled circles beneath a drowsy pair of eyes.

The world hadn’t fully turned, and fulgent rays off stars were still visible to earth.

Though certain no one in the house was awake at this hour, he didn’t dare check the time. At the forefront of his mind simmered bare recollections of the dream he’d just woken up from, now tossing restlessly. His room appeared shrouded with brume. He stared through it. Sweating.

It had been the same scenery as before, the dream that had haunted him ever since that night at the Astronomy Tower. He screwed his eyes shut, willing his mind to fragmentize the words and the visions from the dream:

“What is a moment in time?”

“Not even I can tell you that,” a fuzzy Norfolk accent had spoken from beside him.

Beneath their noses splayed a map of the world. Every country was white; the oceans turquoise blue. The person murmuring by his side had a cup of coffee clamped to his palms. On it were inky prints of horses in battle. Louis questioned the motif, knowing for sure neither England nor Denmark was at war. But this is when the uncertainty ended, the entirety of following events being crystal clear and more authentic than what he’d ever felt awake.

“Wow,” Louis'd whispered in a hitching lilt. “I cannot believe this is the world. And now it’s in our hands!”

The boy had chuckled.

 _He thinks I’m stupid,_ he'd panicked, _I need to will myself more relaxed._

“Do you wish we were in the world?” The other boy asked.

Louis had turned then, capturing him in profile. His eyes were grey against the porthole, like a sooty watchtower of things more bright.

“Oh, I don’t think like that.”

But the night’s rays dappled his face, he could sense their dance, and knew his blushing grew visible.

_Damn the moon and the Milky Way. And the boy's kerosene lamp._

 

The wooden floor stung his soles as he wobbled over to the double-hung windows of his balcony. The heavy sleep left his eyes for each second passing.

But he couldn't spot any ships from his room.

The nights had set to sting of stooping temperatures, and the thick dew from the lawn doused his pink furry slippers as he paced across it. Ships went as quickly as they came once the foghorn blew, and like a pull to an ambit, he always reached it by dawn.

 

Used to the curious boy gazing transfixed at the cargos every morning at cockcrow o’clock, the anglers had stopped finding his presence peculiar long ago.

The weightless foam skimmed back and forth the waves, its sea spray thrusting into the air. If he could choose his way of death, it would be to drown in the ocean like an anchor. He’d be the closest to earth possible, face blue and figure faded by heavy pressure and tangles of sea grass for perhaps to never be found. Hopefully. Because if anyone did find him, he’d smell of algae and shrimp, and who would want to smell that?

He lift his head up to spot the biggest ship on the harbour. Worn and scruffy men with bucket hats bellowed messages back and forth, echoing like warrior shouts, flinging out trammel nets. The screeches from the seagulls came muted, as if far away. Half in this world, half in another.

In the middle of the frame was jet-black hair on a boy darting across the deck, heaving up torn strings of seines.

The foghorn again.

The seagulls.

His frosty slippers.

The boy stilled, looking down at him. At a man’s shout, the boy’s attention shifted back to the gillnet. Once fully in, they regained eye contact once more, so he waved, and had it returned. Not able to stop the tremble, the morning being biting and arctic, his waves grew frenzied. The boy’s waves sped up as well, boosting momentum in the air. Louis rose to his toes so his arms could reach further, eliciting the boy to hop up and down, grinning, and Louis did the same.

One of the fishermen on the docks had set the 50’s transistor radio on. Poorly signalled songs swell in the air, foxtrot and jazz from a radio station tuned into Jutland.

His mind flashed back to the painting in his bedroom. A giant one of the Battle of Trafalgar. The sails were torn and the cannons out. It looked like everyone was about to die. He didn’t understand how anything could float on the sea. Surely, a ship weighed too much for that to be possible.

Besides, if even ships managed to stay afloat then he definitely couldn’t die in the sea; he’d only float back up, visible and not mysteriously disappeared.

His toes curled up at that, attempting to huddle the slightest of warmth. They were benumbed, and the motion didn’t thaw at all. Fog snared his ankles like the blow of a cigarette, and he kept up the waving to dissolve the looming density. The boy hadn’t stopped either, and it turned comical how they could make each other out in the scant rifts of vision cutting through the fog. Now the seagulls flew in with full force – a rustle bringing the morning to life.

The big ship loosened from the dock, engine reeling it backwards in glacial pace.

_NO!_

He rushed to the jetty, to the last plank of the shore with the Baltic sea bobbing before him.

“When will you come back?” he bellowed, words swallowed by the horn. He scurried from right to left and left to right, as if it would bring the ship closer, pull it back in. The anglers rushed about with the mechanics of an ant colony, brawn arms hurling and tobacco funnelling through the cracks of their tattered teeth.

Everything reeking of oil.

“They’re off, son,” a Scot said, slicing his fish with a silvered spear. “You better get back home before breakfast and your folks begin to wonder where the hell you are.”

Louis looked up at him. His white beard was tangled, and had the texture of a toilet brush. “But they’ll be back?”

“Not ‘til end of May next year.”

 

It was a 40 second lope back to his room.

Ribs cramped against his chest, he straggled forth a white wooden chair from the corner of his room, one he’d never previously touched, and climbed it to face his painting and sniff it in.

Tears marched his eyes from the spurt, kept at bay with fretful flickers.  

Still the foghorns blew wild into his room, to his face, and he leaned a cheek against the battle where men fell into the sea and cannonballs smashed the tiller, looking like everything would perish within an hour – not able to contain his grin.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title named after lyric in Sweet Disposition – The Temper Trap 
> 
> //Oh, reckless abandon,  
> like no one’s watching you//


	3. of a hurricane

 

**August 31st, 2016**

 

Harry sensed his pinkie pad echo numb in Jonas' lighting of his fag.

It had something to do with a heartbreak, the reason Jonas was incontestably gloomy today. Most people thought they knew heartache despite it being a minor love-related setback, and overall, he seemed fine enough to Harry.

They were sat before a large abandoned industrial site, replaced with hot dog stands all glossed with strong mustard and pickles laced in honey with baby onions, bratwursts, pork- and cocktail sausage and five beer stands. The joint hummed jazz classics of Saint Louis Blues and the Sidewinder, which was weirdly contagious. (Also, they may have inhaled that one too many gram of weed over at the basement of Harry's hostel.)

 

A bonfire cackled in a rusty tin container. Orange and coal mirages swivelled snake-like against the centuries old buildings on the other side of the stream. Red-bricked walls dating from a time no one they met had lived to witness, swallowed by poison ivy. The people by the dock wearing red lipstick and hipster garments were only copies, Harry mulled, parading about as if other eons lay in their cells.

Harry had no fond for hipsters. That’s why he only carried four shirts in his backpack: two white and two black, three jeans and a breached comb. No fuzz. No flannel. Like now. His hair hung loose as on an overgrown sheep after he forgot his headscarf back at the hostel. Skinny black jeans, and blotchy grey t-shirt. 

Lars, a 19-year old Norwegian friend of Haakon, had joined them on the Adirondack chairs. He'd ran away from home in attempt to delay his parent's divorce, Haakon had briefed him earlier that day - in addition to prolong telling them that he was gonna be an artist, a painter. That he’d never return to business school.

His fragile manners looked ripped out of the pages of a misty forest kind of fairy tale, a peculiar visage to the canal's pollution and the stars looming through the indigo sky. It was the last day of August and the horizon was getting a burn. Filling and empathic.

Harry took great fond of views. He’d actually spent this exact summer doing weather rapports for a local TV-broadcast in northern Malaysia using the pseudonym Sunni-An Rainee. (He’d always dreamt of a secret, superhero name to grace himself with.) He had spent his summer taking free classes of astronomy at a government-funded educational centre in Puchong. _Gorgeous_ lotuses in crystal blue, still ponds, and beer sold at every sooty corner, two pennies a piece ... But very hot. Insufferable. He’d near to cut his curls off. He had learned basics of Dusunic if nothing else, and that lightning strike earth 8 million times a day.

 

"The world is so big." Lars said, albeit being a relatively humble 316 miles from home. He chucked down half his bratwurst. “Maybe I’ll just find myself a princess and stay forever.”

Harry made a face while gulping down his Tia Maria. He had gulp after gulp, couldn’t seem to get enough of the alcohol these days. These past weeks. This year.

“Only princes aboard, Lars. Sorry. Unless you’re into that, of course.” Haakon shrugged, indulging blissfully in a Prague brewed pint.

“The royals are a big thing, here?”

“I guess. Hard to abolish monarchy once it’s settled.”

“Strange thing. Kings and queens and just being born with that power. Not having done anything for it. Do they live somewhere out on the countryside?” Lars' gaze swum across the scenery, anchoring at an illusive pinpoint in a cloud. “Huge villas? Castles? The Norwegian royal family has a castle on the end of Oslo's main street, up in a park, but they live elsewhere normally I think. They only appear in the castle during Constitution Day and Christmas and stuff.”

“Most live over there.” Haakon aimed to three spires and an ornate keep across the river. It rose amidst the old brick walls and shiny business estates of inner city. “I’m sure they have country estates though.”

Harry searched for the last kroners in his pocket for another drink as his knuckles came to brush up against a furrowed piece of paper. A note he’d gotten from the great-great grandson of some famous Danish, long dead, storyteller. _Blue Bar_ unfurled in cobalt whirls. Supposedly one of Copenhagen's best joints back in the day.

 

He’d met him some years ago at a café in Dublin called Blues & Penguin. The great-great grandson of fairy-tale author Hans Christian Andersen, who Harry hadn’t even known was Danish despite him being the mythical figure behind most of his guilty pleasures (The Little Mermaid and Wicked Prince).

It was an instant connection, and clear as day how he had the blood of a great fictionist in him. His stomach was pressing threateningly tight against his already bursting jeans, and his sweater had that downy feel to it. All of him was warm and polite and oozed of hot cocoa, with thick beard rested beneath sage, kind eyes.

“You look like a story,” he had giggled a short grunt, though with a solemn look in his eyes. Harry hadn’t known what to say to that.

His brass pen'd swirled round and round in rhythmic curves. “So how old are you?”

“17.”

The strokes'd ceased. “17?”

“17.” Harry smirked. Everyone got baffled once he mentioned his age. As if he should’ve been at home, tucked in a sweet and sound bed, comfortable enough to make his dreams feel unimportant (because why chase something you may never have when you already live a perfectly OK like?) and make him feel guilty for wanting to elope.

Shortly after, they had wandered the Latin Quarter and emptied a wine bottle each. Harry was off hitch hiking to Paris with three randoms he’d found on a travellers site online. “Here.” The great-great grandson had passed over a detailed, rather stunning, drawing of a map. “These are the best pubs by the boarder, and the fastest route to each one. There’s always a short cut if you’re in a hurry.” He’d winked.

 

“Oh, we’ll never get in,” Haakon shot a demeaning glare at the note, ruffling Harry's reverie. He had no idea it existed still. “It’s more for like … Scandinavian celebs and stuff. An elitist driven place, if you ask me. No fun, trust me.”

Lars had set off singing by himself, overlapping the latter part of Haakon's singing. “Some say this world of trouble is the only one we need, but I’m waiting for that day when …”

_Does everybody stand living wherever they live because they hope to travel one day?_

Harry's hand brushed mindlessly up and down his weightless glass, brows arched in contemplation of the winter to come. Of where he'd be.

"Where areyou going next, Harry?" Jonas tilted, apparently reading his mind. "Where are all these adventures taking you?"

"Dunno." His shoulders sunk. Because where the fuck did he go? He had experienced everything, it felt like. He’d had a great job and a horrible one, he’d paid taxes, he’d gone on vacations. He’d been in love. It was time to go, but it had always been time to go; this was why he travelled. And now, even when travelling, it was still always time to go. He needed a plan, a way of making his money grow instead of finding one deadbeat job after another, barely making rent and never being able to splurge.

Harry wanted to sing and play guitar properly, and he wanted a house on the hills of Los Angeles and a home for sleep in London; walls covered with paintings of butterflies and a bed in black iron.

“Someone I know has delivered his masters today, though." Haakon jut his chin to the sky. "It’s a tradition to be carried off on a door board, kind of, paraded around the blocks of the university. People heave out water from bottles and buckets from their windows and balconies. It’s really fun. We could go see? About 28 students has delivered today. Or so my mate texted. Might be more.”

“What kind of a weird tradition is that?” Lars frowned. Though dubious, his knee detracted up against the chair, prepping to rise and bolt with the proposal.

“It’s just for fun. Big party. Everyone gets drunk and high. Lots of friends of mine go there, so we'd definitely be able to score some form of alcohol. And ladies, mind you.”

At that, Lars' heartache finally seemed to wear off. A sweeping glint crossed his face, setting all the wrinkles to cool. 

 

*

 

Haakon jostled open the main wooden gates with a set of five tiny keys that neither Harry, Lars or Jonas knew where had come from, and the next moment they were cantering down a spiralled stoned staircase as hurried as they could; tricking their limbs through a brittle crevice of the next door.

A squared patch of wet grass splayed inside the grounds. A giant oak claimed the centre, casting shadows like rays off a sun. Cheery groupings of people were loitering near a large red door. Haakon led them through the packs and cross the threshold. A windy scent of beer caps and pungent chocolate cake filtered through an off-white, bowed hallway before a world of aquamarine flashes and techno beats greeted them at the end.

 

Paintings portraying Genesis plastered the walls inside the main room. A man and a woman covering their genitals. On the opposite wall was a man, fully nude, and an accompanying horse about to leap out of the wall’s confinements.  

Harry’s British accent was quick to enthral a group of Danes as they flocked near the makeshift bar, circling him in just after Haakon introduced everybody. Within seconds, shots of stuff Harry's tongue couldn’t even fathom or taste trickled down his gorge. He gave his Adam's apple a squeeze just to make sure he hadn’t gone paralyzed. It stung of Absinth, which wasn't as much a taste as it was a scorching char.

Stealing peeks at the boys' crisp white shirts, he felt his own going clam from all the pacing it took just to get there, and now of the immaculate Macarena performance (if he might say so himself) he was forced to partake in.

“Ring Oscar,” called one of the boys beside him. He was the one closest to Harry's left. Whitest shirt.

“De er tilbake strags," another replied, looking aware. On guard. He didn’t smile back even when Harry politely raised a toast and spilled it out on the floor in a final, "Heeeeey macarena!"

Maybe Harry was too drunk and had a too glistening forehead and maybe his shirt and jeans were too faded out in colour, too bland, too tight and too all over the place, and whatever. He ordered another mojito and drank it in spite. Of something.

 

Wet confetti, smashed balloons and base vibrations climaxed together, and Harry wondered whether he'd experienced this exact type of night a thousand other nights before. Lars was beneath a chandelier, dancing like a puppy eager for bones. Jonas had hogged a prime seat by the bar with direct calling line to the bartenders. 

“Roof!” A new voice bawled, and Harry, having forgotten why they got there in the first place, tagged along, flirting himself to a Prince cigarette from a blonde woman by the DJ.

 

The university was clearly going through a renovation stage. Arched windows let out to the platform of a scaffolding. It reminded of interlinking, long, narrow balconies. The cobblestone far beneath transferred shivers through the metal frames up their ankles and hands, clutched loosely and sporadically to the guardrail.

Hordes of people’s heads were peaking down at the street in anticipation of pelting pots of water at the poor graduates.

A labyrinth of apartment blocks neighboured the university where the lights inside their homes shone with mellow TV-light and stoves with sizzling pans. Of long gone adolescent and early mornings.

The sky wasn’t entirely black yet, and in the middle of a staccato skyline were the turns of a rollercoaster wheel, and a sharp sort of landmark with flashing lights in its peak, like a light tower. In nearest proximity were thousands of people Harry couldn’t see, wouldn’t meet and would only carry as an unimportant drunken memory from the time he was 25.

_I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive._

The spike landmark had used to be a butchery and then Denmark’s biggest mill, a slurry voice informed him. It breathed wet into his ear, _yuk_ , as he caught someone’s pair of eyes. A person on the scaffolding below. It was an odd angle of vision, made out between the crevices of steel flooring. It had been a distinctively handsome face, he saw. Easeful, but handsome. Movie star-like. Lead role-like.

Harry’s black jeans stopped feeling tight around his thighs (his weakest spot) that moment, and his t-shirt had near to morphed into feathery air. He had to keep batting off astray locks of hair obscuring his vision as he joined in on the shouts and clapping. The volume grew louder.

“Harry! There he is!” Haakon's face lit with enthuse, and a roar of excited whoops swell across the dorms and the apartments. A bucketful of icy water was thrust to Harry’s torso. It jiggled unsteadily at once. “Toss that! That's yours!”

Harry, and everyone else, then tilted their beholders downwards, and the students, who quite rightly were carried on actual doors, got indubitably doused - no holds barred. They wore thin jumpers and sweatpants; some hadn't even bothered putting on their shoes.

“Løp!” A boy urged somewhere to his left, and all of the sudden they were bolting through the constructions, ducking at springing metal cross braces and other devices for severe head injures, some slipping, some gasping of laughter. Harry, threading with incredible balance considering his alcohol intake, heaved up to a tiny staircase to the upper floor. 

The boy who'd yelled the word Harry assumed could've meant nothing else but _run,_ were giggling straight behind him, and the tip of his shoes crashed against Harry’s heals. There was something unhallowed to his laugh; its high notes impish.

Harry made to turn but was forged towards the crowd already standing at the top. _People alive_. The roars off the streets coiled up like fog to a fume, to sun-kissed Scandinavian faces and bricked ceilings, to chimney tops and steel poles and wires that connected the city; making it glow and breathe and function.

Two solo Maplewood's hovered foreign and bland in the urban landscape.

 

Like the gliding sequence of a film, the next thing he saw was the joint living room of a lower floor, this one too with a bar. Harry held on to the fresh tumbler of Label 5 he was given by a random for dear life, though no one was really jerking into him. A person was observing him from the bar, though, and Harry recognized.

The movie star.

The ones around seemed to conveniently move ever so slightly to the side, creating an automatic beeline for destiny to unfold.

"Hi." The young man said. Chocolat-y and baritone.

"Hey."

“Haven’t seen you here before."

“Never been. Are you British, too?”

“American.”

“Oh!” Harry facepalmed himself and missed.

“Yeah, the accent is sort of a give-away,” the man winked and sat his mojito steady at the bar top.

“Sorry, I’ve had a bit too much to drink.”

He shrugged, facilely. “You look decent enough to me.”

Harry'd always used to blush at this. Now, he merely winked back. The American proceeded talking about something Harry knew wasn’t worthwhile. It wasn’t the American’s fault.

“In a torn-up town. No postcode envy.” Two girls sang with sweet voices, calming the whole room with acoustic guitar and a hipster on the synth. It felt like it was for Harry, that maybe, the lyrics had been written with him in mind. Or just some of them. A sentence. A word. _Tigers on a gold leash._

It was happening again. The weird type of fear claiming that no, Harry, you don’t _really_ want to be here, or anywhere. And he was scared because what if it was true? Getting drunk had used to help Harry get along with things. With the hollow space that had come some time ago and never left. He was too aware of the cliché in feeling nothing, and so he’d taken up smoking (and occasionally worse indulgences) and traveling and balloon flights and fucking _yoga_.

It wasn’t until last year this approach began to ebb off. A fear of life set in as replacement. He’d gone from not caring to being scared of hurting a fly, to making a strange mistake or messing up the natural order of things, of time, the universe, so that other people would get hurt or randomly affected by how he kept messing up things. The butterfly effect. Maybe him being born had been a mistake? An honest, genuine mistake? If you have negatives and positives, then you have mistakes and successes as well. And someone has to be those mistakes. Not everyone has been born for a higher reason, or a reason at all.

He focused on the green of the Carlsberg bottles sprawled at a table. The red of the bricked walls from where a scorched candle overflowed to the wooden floor with stearin. That was good. He could focus now. 

Like a saint, Haakon approached him from behind, said there was time for a cigarette break and a taxi fare home, and so pulled Harry out of the American’s aura and presence.

 

"Why you bother chatting up people you only seem to long for getting away from? Or are you high? Someone sneak you weed?" He took a close-up of Harry's pupils.

 _Haakon has some seriously green eyes._ "I wasn't chat-"

"I like it." Jonas whisked up to their side. Once more had a group of people decided to join together for new escapades; a trail of students promenading with them through the Copenhagen night. Harry wondered if it was a conscious event or somewhat like a wireless network. "Going in for the kill, huh, Harry?"

"The kill. Yeah."

The cobblestone of inner city glazed with rain. Must've been a small shower while they were indoors. An icy breeze enveloped them as they reached the perimeter of the centre down by the canal. Their attempts at lighting cigarettes died with each whiff, and they huddled closer to a cobbler's darkened shop. _Authentic I_ _talian Leather, 50% out August! Andrea Santoni's bespoke haut de gamme shoes! Kontakt Jørgen inside!!_

A passing cargo drifted further down the cove. Harry glanced over, free hand dug deep into his jeans pocket. The old industrial site was right opposite them, with triple the guests from earlier. Sing-a-longs to When You Were Young soared belated over to their side. There were flickers of ember lighting ... Outlines of the chairs they'd claimed earlier.

“Ryging er farlig, drenger!” a boy boasted, strolling up from behind their backs and splaying his hands over two chosen backs in the crew ambling further down by the desolate bank. Harry, suspecting they were lighting up weed, had no recollection of who any of them were. The boy wore a red sweater, Harry could see by the cast of light from the opposite party, his hair tousled in rosy halo. Haphazard scruff clad the edges of his jaw, offering the impression of having slept outside for long. His eyes were the same type of pale as the moon, no colour or soul from this faraway angle, and Harry watched his cheeks hollow around the filter of a borrowed cigarette.

 _Maybe he’s hungry_.

As he puffed out his circled smoke, the gust whipped particularly aggressive, _slap, slap, slap_ , and it was as if everyone had stilled.

Harry swallowed a leftover dreg of cranberry vodka lurking in the well of his gorge, though when had he ever had cranberry drinks that night?, and directed his attention back to the others. “Kom, kom! Karl? Er du pingle? Oscar? Kristian?” occupied his ears then, and now the boy was running head first in the water with a friend, dashing their bodies in the biting water.

But it couldn’t be. It just couldn’t be. He knew it couldn’t be.

“Lighter?” Haakon flicked it before his nose, inches apart.

Oh. How long had he been patting on a dry cig?

Harry accepted, revelling in three quick drags as their taxi came turn signalling a block east.

He followed the steps of Haakon, Jonas and Lars mindlessly, ending up in the cab with them. His eyes focused clearly again, and everything that was, was a decrepit leather headrest.

 

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m rekindling my love for When You Were Young as it was the soundtrack of the best year of my life (2008), forcing it upon every sentence, in the title and forever upon you. *Insists throughout all days* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ff0oWESdmH0
> 
> //We're burning down the highway skyline  
> on the back of a hurricane  
> that started turning  
> when you were young//
> 
> And heeey everyone :) I don't mind comments! Does it suck, does it work? All feedback welcome!


	4. old, cheap bottles

**May 31st, 2006**

 

Louis had stumbled and fallen twice on his Olympic marathon-proportions of a run from evening choir practice to Kapteinens pub. It stood glowing opposite a harboured ship from Stavanger, Norway, and one from Norfolk, England.

A stage (a petite elevation of the floor) stood ready with two nervous-looking Scandinavians and their guitars. Some checking the mike and one-two-three-ing later, they were crooning softly.

It didn’t matter though.

Between shifts of guitar chords, Louis searched fervently for other things to ground him. His palms had grown a light sweat.

“Kid, are you never at home?” Mikkie asked. He was one of the retired sailors, now frequently drunk on homebrew smelling too sewage for Louis' liking.

“I’m 14 and five months. I’m not _that_ young. And definitely not a kid.”

“Trust me,” he jabbed at his shoulders and whipped out a dark wooded pipe from his chest pocket only for Louis to watch his face disappear in disarranged tobacco smoke. “You’re a kid.”

All though bartenders would initially eye Louis with greatest suspicion, Louis got what he wanted due to being a prince (and Denmark's overly liberal attitudes towards alcohol). His age had never mattered for anything - the very least at Kapteinens.

“Is everyone here?” He snooped for the bartender, followed up with the utmost courtly ask of a cranberry zinger.

Proprietor John fetched a highball glass in easy motion from the middle shelf, sniggering. “Who is everyone?”

There was no point. There was no time. No one understood anything of importance around here. Louis accepted the beer with a huff and brought it outside to walk hurriedly - fine, scamper - alongside the mooring. A group of men stood there, also puffing their precious pipes.

“Are you English?” he asked them.

“Norfolk,” someone replied.

_Oh god, oh god._

“Oh. OK.”

But they were all like 60 or something.

A salty sadness settled in his guts, all down to his feet who weighed cemented to the asphalt below, incapable of exploration. Of course he wasn’t there. He must’ve been too young. Not allowed out once more.

Louis trekked back to the pub, head dizzy. Maybe it wasn't his head; maybe the ocean's waves had a spectral effect on the labyrinth in his inner ear, offering real life motion sickness. 

 _For gods sake, it was just a boy_.

This was just like that time he got chickenpox and remained the only child (approximately) left in Copenhagen that summer. The entire fencing team had sent postcards stamped Santorini and Monte Carlo as they sunbathed their way through a Mediterranean cruise. But not Louis - left both behind and alone.

Hearing the door whine shut behind him, he tried ordering another beer, being refused it this time around, before getting called over to the fireplace by his best sailor friend Arthur. Arthur was 89 years old and kept an hawk-eye of the harbour's happenings. He knew all of the cargos, all of the men, and all of the gains and losses the sea offered and stole from them.

 _There must have been yet a loss out at sea_.

Describing panic was never easy because it was a state so much larger than words, and unless one had experienced it themselves, it was probably not worth explaining. Especially if you're not sure that's what's actually happening to you. So Louis blinked, refocusing.

Drawing feeble courage, he toddled up to where they were sat. He'd always found it galling walking up to adult men with beards and comb overs. Even inside a potpourri incensed pub their skin reeked of clam and a month's worth of moil. Louis didn't know where to settle his gaze.

“They're out on the town.” Arthur smiled his Santa Claus smile, brogue accent filtering the brass band music. "Some band by Kø-... What was it again, lads?"

"Kødbyen." Replied the man to his left.

"OK." Louis said, eyes in stalemate with a crimson oil lamp. Who were _they_? And why did Arthur seem so ...  _calm_? This truly was the Summer Of Chickenpox revival. Arthur'd had that exact assertion. "Never mind the world," he'd said, handing over crushed nougat ice cream from Billy's Creamy Haven. "What's important is to explore." 

 

Louis left Kapteinen more antsy than at arrival. Hotfoot down the street he caught the peek of a bus's tail, west by the statue-littered roundabout. Aware of the futility of his attempt (when had a bus ever halted in the desperation of two waving arms flapping three blocks behind?), he set for the chase.

Halfway down the lone sidewalk, he glommed his hands to his kneecaps to regain breath. The temperature here was decidedly colder compared to the ocean side. Strange.

"Nu?" A jagged, male voice cut through the thickened air. "Skulle du være med eller ige?"

Its turning lights flashed up the entire quarter as Louis gratefully took on the sliding step.

"Ja, takk!"

He beeped his travel card.

 

All but two seats in the very back were available. He opted to letting his back sail with the turning swirls from left to right against the front pole, resting his eyes on the hasty visions outside. It was a feeling of being put in the hands of faith; no seat belt, less yet a seat, no real barrier between him and the front.

The stop of the evening seemed to be Halmtorvet. Kødbyen - the Meatmarket - was a sought-after venue for locals and tourists alike. He exited with the throng of other passengers.

Finding a proper viewpoint proved hard a task as he rose to tiptoe over the masses. It equalled a levelled position but Louis would grow to a proper height any time soon. Just not this exact summer. Or fall, maybe.

A large section stood guarded off with security staff prancing stony-faced in high-visibility apparel. The section proved miniscule in comparison to the glimpses Louis caught of a stage far behind it. The Script posters stapled the railings, obscured by long, blonde locks of hair. Girls stood packed like sardines to every corner of the barrier fencing.  _Popular band, probably._

In keeping with the pace of the song, the crowd's hands mirrored the singer's in dopey waves. Louis saw them as billowing cornflowers before a setting sun. Flaky rays of purple and green sliced funnels all the way to his face. "I'm not moving," they sang. Repeating. "I'm not moving."

Louis twitched round. A cluster of bars lumped together further down the right. Smothered bear cans crunched metallic on his way over to the, thankfully not closed off, section. Quite the contrary, it was alive and kicking with cocktail lounges, college clubs and revamped dive bars. This must'd been the very heart of the Meatmarket. Grimy. Stuffed. It felt safer there, despite the ruckus, tucked in and away from all the alarm. None of this clientele would know of him though, and aware of his somewhat anonymous first impression, he gauged his allowance of entrance slim to none.

His ears latched onto the ringing base of a distant beat as the moseyed outside the seediest one. A flock of people before him were brawling about marketing strategies and which album stood the chance of being the record of the year, exuding wafts of Camel and Tuborg. Louis merged with them, inhaling the scent with a giggly sort of expectation.

Pinching his nose as the reek intensified, he nearly did a pratfall over a threshold, and that was it; he was in.

 

The air in the bar alone left him wonderfully loopy, and he nicked a quick sip of a rum and coke standing solitary on a wonky table. He'd love to get hold of a sweet tasting beer for himself, but everything was out of reach according to his age limit, plus he was just a head taller than the bar. He stood no chance. Beer wasn't so much his thing as it was easy to order. He didn't know any of the fancy drinks' name, and felt too shy to request the only one he knew - Sex on the beach. And by the time they'd be done concocting his drink, they'd have the loophole of devoting their attention on his adolescent appearance. So, no.

Not sparing many minutes in the dingy hub, he headed back out. His loud and drunk people quota had already been filled two weekends ago at his cousin's Christening. (There were still debates on where that one coating of marzipan, after having served as his uncle's crown for a good hour, had gone. Louis suspected the roof gutter. That was at least where he'd stood blaring at birds and tossing cherries at them by midnight.)

With each his step, rhymes of spectral Script's lyrics cast after him as he chased the shortcuts of the labyrinth being nightlife and adults, halting by Circle Bridge. It paralleled the lively haste of the tram, a gateway connecting the two parts of town for all the citygoers- and bikers. A rowdy pack of teenagers basked in drunkenness and kebab shop lights in front of him; he almost stooped onto the one boy's back.  

 

“Drinking old, cheap bottles of wine! Sit talking up all night, doing things we haven’t for a while … A while, yeah!” He sang, and rather unripe at that. 

Another boy, whom Louis could sideways determine had raven-ish hair and pitch black brows, glommed onto Louis' right shoulder. “We’re smiling but we’re close to tears! Even after all those years …” Then he let go, lanky frame cast onto another boy.

“And just when we’re believing make it seeing … For the first time.”

They - six people or so - set off on a choir of howling _u-uh_ ’s, eyes shut theatrically at the lampposts as if filmed from above for a music video.  

Louis missed his chance to cover his ears as another came to clasp all over him.

“Sorry.” The boy, a blonde, giggled, catching his eye after passing a streetlight.

“It’s OK.” Louis mumbled. He didn't know these people, politeness would be the best policy.

“We’re just a little bit drunk. A little, tiny bit. Teensy-weeny …” The boy rubbed his index and thumb up in front of Louis’ face, causing Louis to gush out a laugh. _Brits._ “Ba-arely, itsy-”

The scaffolding of the arena shone far across from them, but if Louis squinted just enough, it was a crown atop their heads. A neat row of cherry trees glimmered emerald in their wake, and replacing it all was a red, stuffed bus, whooshing past. They'd come to a larger intersection.

The blonde swallowed two sips of a can of beer he clutched. "East!" He commanded, an unusual referral to heading left. They took a sharp turn off Strandvejen, down the protected area of the centurial boat houses by the harbourside.

The air was darker here, more obscured than where they just had gambolled. Louis felt flush in this secretive escape. Not one person in his family or staff even knew he was out.

Their concoction of singing and chatter brawled loud for the brittle, lowly lit windows on the old shacks, facades exuding a miffed sort of aura.

"What's that down there?" Louis peeked atop a shoulder. "Wait ... Where are we? This is Svanemøllebugten, isn't it?"

The blonde positively cracked. "Sure. Longer the name, the more I recognize it as where we docked the ship."

"You're sailors? I know some people down there, actually. Sailors, in fact. I usually go down there every morning because I want to be a sailor, too."

"Well, you sure got time in your favour. What are you, like 13?"

"14 and five months." His voice didn't intend to come off as stern as it did. It was quite unruly of it. "I'm allowed in at the pub, so." He shook his shoulders loose in a shrug.

"See! Plenty of time!"

 

They hoisted down a steeper curve of a cliff, landing with a _thump_ on the planked harbour. Kapteinen's bustled straight before them. A cloud of smoke and numerous pints veiled the people by the outside tables.   

“Not only did you find him but you brought him home!” A goodly man with a feather-clad porkpie hat barged up. He stared straight at Louis for a moment, before zigzagging the rest up and down. "You lads, what've I told ya about fetching our buddin' captain out on drunken jaunts!" But his tone was merry and eyes blurry; Louis had a feeling the boys would be forgiven very soon. Whoever this captain was. 

The man shoved forth the boy behind Louis and released a series of harsh pats to his back, urging him in before them. The blonde had already entered. "Typical Niall," one of the others said affectionately.

 

Well inside they found him hugging John above a row of seven shots. "Here, here!" He bellowed, and as Louis was about to go for his share, a twitch in his sleeve caused him to carousel off to the side and towards the nook of the fireplace. "Royalty won't get you _everywhere_ ," Arthur admonished with a grin. "Enough alcohol for you, young Louis."

Louis wished Arthur's caring nature would limit itself to an untamed, jovial, weathered man of the seas - not a grandfatherly, sage Dumbledore.   

"'sides, you're not alone. Harry's not supposed to be drinking either." 

"Well, I'm not drunk or anything," Louis defended. The shadow of a person taller than him ambled to the side.

"They don't accept Euros."

Louis turned. The boy was shrugging, cheeks a melting red and pupils widened at the murky venue.

His curled up hair shone ember, a sunrise red. Fire red… Not raven ... _Oh!_ "You're burning!" Louis hurled him over to the side. The boy'd been standing directly in front of the fireplace. In afterthought of the rush manner, Louis added a, "Sorry." 

“Observant fella, ya always been,” Arthur chuckled until his stool seemed dangerously close to a fracture, and the other sailors joined the good cheer. “And here's to you, Harry,” he rose his sherry. Louis wondered whether he'd disrupted the toast upon arrival. Another boy had positioned next to Harry, and together they seemed to listen patiently to Arthur. “For being so brave. Hard working already and with plenty o’ youthful years to come. Not small rubbish, what you've been through. And this is an important day, as we all know. Sebastian." He nodded sagely. "What would we do without you ..."

And was that ... a _tear_ threatening to escape Arthur's eye?

"Both of ya. This is for you. And the adventure ahead!"

A streak of something solemn cut the hair. Might be Louis' faraway hopes of being brave and hard working and cut for the sea as well. He'd never received such high praises his entire life. And a throb in his chest churned with the notion that there was something important about this particular cargo crew that Arthur hadn't bothered telling him. He knew how much Louis _loved_ stories from sea, and what more than real life stories - it went without saying!

“Here, here! Lucky are the youngn's.” Yngar, ten years Arthur's junior, hoisted himself off his chair and initiated a circled meet of glasses. Louis was surprised to see even Harry had managed to be snuck a tumbler of Absolute, which he devoured in a flash, unnoticed by the elders. And what was the big deal about Harry drinking anyway? He looked ... 17? 18? 16?

He was chuckling, ducking his head before the fire. Someone had just said something quite rowdy. Louis was sure he had heard it, but the roars of laughter filtered through his ears like ethereal winds.

It so wasn't fair.

Louis' head could barely manage a pint while every other person could chug down any liquor their heart desired. Arthur shifted his arm, motioning between Harry and Louis. “Way past both of your bedtimes. Louis, you remember where the international cargos park? Maybe follow Harry over there? Now, I'm not saying he's scared of the dark ..."

"I'm _not_ scared of th-"

"You're absolutely not! And while you're at it, Louis, try not to boast you’re inheriting Denmark or summat.” He winked.

"I'm not inheriting anything." A blush crept up his neck, though, hot and bothered. “So, uhm… Do you want to… uhm, måske vi finder nogle natmad på molen?”

"English," Arthur smiled, and Louis veered his face automatically at the bar in spontaneous people watch.

"Oh."  He allowed a quick peek at Harry. "Sorry. Everyone speaks English at Kapteinen's so I never really know who's Danish or not."

 

He opened the door for him, calculating Harry's facial expression as they passed the threshold. (It usually took Louis a millisecond to read someone else's feeling - a gifted trait.) “So…” He tucked his hands in the pockets of his jeans jacket, shrunken after last time's wash, and strolled onwards. “Harry, am I right?”

"You know it's Harry, Louis."

The dark in the air and the dark in Harry's dimples were of the same type, Louis spotted. He'd coalesce with the backdrop in an instant weren't it for his pale complexion.

"Yeah, sorry, I just ..." He shrugged. "Don't know what to say. Cool name, Harry. Like Potter!"

"More like Styles."

"Oh, I rather like that!"

Harry's arms waved excessively to and fro. If he was Louis' age then it also wasn't fair how much taller he was.

A glittery sky reigned atop his shocks of hair, and something in the air felt freer. Or just colder.

“Football!” Louis announced then, flipping a desolate ball off the ground and kicking it over to Harry, who unfortunately didn’t catch it in time. It bounced up the hillock, inwards the residential area.

“Shit!” he clasped his palm over his mouth, at once alert, “someone’s  _garden_!”

“Oh, don’t be scared, Harry-berry.”

A look of bewilderment clad Harry's face. “OK ... that's positively the worst nickna-”

“Shh! We just sneak quietly in." Louis marched superciliously. This was his territory, his _country_ , after all. "Don’t make a sound! Don’t even breathe!” he added for theatrical effect. The Danes were a funny people, this Harry person would soon realise.

It was already promising; the sailor was nibbling at the inside of his cheek, smile chewed into it. "So we'll faint then."

“Fine, breathe but just a bit!” 

Harry made a show of inhaling and exhaling. Miniature clouds of breath rose out into the air. The darkness of the sky caught Harry's fixation, and when he focused his eyes back on Louis, he found they were already on him.

“Harry,  _look_!” Louis whooped. A white cat with auburn dots strolled leisurely before them. “Well, let’s not just stand here – we should follow that thing!”

“Follow the cat?”

“Off we go!”

 

And off they went, whisked into the householded wilderness, up two streets and to the left by the roundabout and to an alley of rose bushes and oaks.

“No, I love you!” Harry cried after the cat as it spurred away into the sleeping village, desperately bolting from their escapade. Tonight's consumption of alcohol had set in effect; he noted that now. He'd also been jetlagged for so long, chased the cat for what felt like longer, that when he now stilled to look at the person babbling by his side - he gleaned a vague awareness at how no one really talked like this to each other.

“It apparently doesn’t love  _you_.” Louis dotted at his chest.

“Nobody loves me …”

“I can love you?”

“Just because no one else will!”

“No, because you wear Axe deodorant, Harry. That’s very loveable, so don’t beat yourself up!’

"Can you smell it? It's nice, right?"

"I have the same one! Kind of reeking, but in a nice way?"

They both paused to sniff their armpits, feline erased from memory.

"It's all I need. I never wear perfume!"

“That’s even more loveable. I don’t think I can love you for too long, actually, I’ll might burst!”

“Don't burst!" Harry folded a dramatic hand to his forehead, then sobering. "'cause then you'd be kind of dead, right?"

Louis cackled. "Pretty much!"

His face was out of breath and flaming. His eyes were clearer than before, and with the same colour of dark blonde hair that Harry'd seen on many heads in his life. All over the world. And here.

“Maybe you want to come see the Danish countryside?”  

Harry's eyes stooped to his lips.

"Only if you want, you know. Tomorrow, maybe. First of June and all." Louis circled a finger up a graffiti adorned parking sign. _Københavns Havn A/S_. "I could be like a travel guide."

“OK."  Harry pursed his lips in a ceremonious nod. "Even though I shouldn’t trust strangers, I trust you.”

Louis laughed at that. “We’re not complete strangers, I think.” 

“Hm … Have we met before?” Harry wiggled his brows.

“Oh my god, Harry … You’re  _that_  cheesy? What’s next, did I fall from the sky? Did my dad steal all the stars?”

“ I… No …” Harry said, baffled at the sudden forthrightness. A shine laced his eyes, and there was a shift. Then he shook his head in shyness.

“Kidding! I’m kidding, Harry. FYI, I never fell from the sky, but I’ve still been told there are stars in my eyes.” He tuckered up close to him and stared deeply into Harry’s to prove a point.

“Right,” Harry nodded, wrist twitching inside his tangled hem.

A small fountain with glass ducks supplemented with soft, dripping sounds from someone's yard.  Louis rolled on his heels. Was he expecting something? Harry didn’t know.

“You’re not questioning my sanity, are you?” He grinned.

“No.”

“Maybe you should. I’m not normally like this. Maybe it’s because I know I’ll never see you again.”

Harry glanced over their surroundings. They were standing in the middle of a narrow brick lane amidst white painted houses with picket fences, yellow patio lights webbing their frame. Crazy waves sounded far away. So far away that Harry could only hear them; the sea blended with the pitch black sky. He almost felt it was strange for light to exist at all this time of day.

_Crash, crash, crash._

“... Unless you actually  _wanted_  to come to the countryside tomorrow.”

“I do.”

“Even after I’ve been this weird?”

“It’s been a major drawback but yeah.”

“Seriously, Harry Styles?”

“Yes, Louis The Inheritor Of Denmark.”

“OK. I’m gonna go home then.”

“Home?”

“Past my bedtime, really.” 

"Well ... Bye then, Lou Balloo!" Harry did a courteous nod for, swivelling his frame around a street lamp with right arm shot to the air for a grand departure finale. _Bedtime,_ he chuckled silently, eyes glassy and awake with it all. 

"Good evening, good sir, Harry Styles, sir!" Louis played along, nod after nod. "Oh, and by the way, can I just say I _adore_ your attire, the way you manage to pull of all these _Styles_ , looks so good on you! I like your styles, Styles!"

Harry revolved once more, fingers clutched tightly on iced metal.

A window screeched open from somewhere in close proximity, shouting two final-sounding words. They were Danish, and Harry searched Louis' face for answers. It was most likely a warning call, as Louis clamped his hand against his mouth and closed his eyes in a gleeful laugh. Music still rose from the pier up to their quarter. They could hear the shipmen's voices, asking around for Harry. Arthur for Louis.

“Whippersnappers! Do you copy!” Their voices rung in echoes.

Apparently the whole world was waiting for Harry and Louis to part. Harry wanted to tell them all _shush_! “Shush!” He said then, dismissing the seaside with a wave of his free hand.

“Shush!” Louis parroted, and they giggled even more maniacal, though set foot towards the harbour still. A slower song was their only reply, playing from the pub, a guitar and a male's voice evoking imagery of everything summer.

" _That summer feeling_ ..." he sang in each chorus.

"I like that song," Louis said, catching the lads roar and scurry onto their designated decks, the coal black night enveloping it all like a mural. "I wonder whose it is." 

The doors of the pub flung in and out as the last visitors floundered out, exposing the heat inside to the biting air. 

"Why? Those are sad lyrics."

"No?" Louis listened in more carefully.

_When the smell of the lawn makes you flop down on it, when the teenage car gets the cop down on it ... That time is here for one more year, and that summer feeling is gonna haunt you ..._

"We're taking the bus tomorrow." Louis said, unperturbed. Churned gravel overtook the song, and skid beneath their feet as they reached the cliff's pulverized sand, mist of sea spray locking their collarbones.

"OK."

"It leaves from the bus station, right behind the pub, at noon. OK?"

"Yeah."

_That summer feeling's gonna haunt you ... And that summer feeling's gonna taunt you, and then that summer feeling is gonna hurt you one day in your life ..._

"You alright?" Louis asked, nudging a pointy shoulder to his own.

"Yes. I'm alright."

"OK, then. Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow."

Louis turned away for a second, then glanced back at Harry for a final grin. His cheekbones were a strange mix of pudgy and sharp mirroring the ships' muted navigation lights. Then he arced a last time, body already a nebulous recollection for Harry. 

It comingled with the shadows of the alley trees and sleeping brick houses. With visions of a boy jumping up and down. Of waving and departing. Of a crusty day in October and May 31st - the air just as brisk each respective day save the present scent of flying apple blossom petals, torn off with the wind and blanketing the planks, the gangway and the slippery deck before his cabin.

 

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter named after For the first time by the Script, inspired by a live show. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nwfegMmpkY the emotions <3 
> 
> //But we're gonna start by  
> drinking old cheap bottles of wine,  
> Sit talking up all night,  
> Saying things we haven't for a while//
> 
> Harbour song at the end of the night: Jonathan Richman - That summer feeling. Seriously. Listen to it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zmy2oBGmPc
> 
> I'm enjoying writing the story btw! Hope you're enjoying reading it :) If not, let me know what you feel is missing/weirdly written/any of the sort! English is not my native language.


	5. the yellow bonnets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> but you are my moon. and the sun. and the stars. -  
> unknown

Warmest June 1st in eight years, clamoured the weather reports.

Harry could tell; fiercely swatting the beads of sweat off his face and the nook behind his knees. _Air Condition ude av funktion_ , alarmed a crookedly written note by the driver's booth. No translation necessary.

Louis had been tinkering with his hair for a good half hour, seated strategically behind, with Niall adorning braided dandelions to it from the side, body poised over Harry’s side. He documented the masterpiece with his Leica 67mm, eyes askance at the rewind function and murmuring something about a beetle getting lost in Harry's ringlets.

Delightful.

Louis’ voice raced the air with clear-cut trill, a stark contrast to his friends; Niel’s, Jørgen’s, August's and Kristian’s abyssal (yet also caterwauling) voice cracks. 

And what the air condition lacked in performance did the radio make up for in volume. A stringing static shot straight through the chapped seat fabric, everything sounding like the long lost hits of a 60's preparty. Harry didn't _get_ Danes.

 

They exited by an oval, gravel lot. Opposite splayed a freshly mowed weald of tree groupings, dotted in generous distance of each other.

A butterfly twosome frolicked near a shrub, and Harry's fingers crossed by instinct - their white wings looking proper doomed in the dance with the thorns. By the next moment they were gobbled whole by a golden halo, sky-high before a cirrus cloud. His retinas flared with the vision, fingers unlatching.

Harry rushed to catch up to where they trooped down a pathway to the right. Niall was busy linking friendship with a ginger in the front; the two leading like a lit pair of ember. All of them, really. Harry was the only one with hair anything remotely of the brown spectrum.

He was also the only one plodding far enough behind to catch Louis flee off the side and leap onto a tree. Its crown was verdant and leafy, like bearing its own little eco system. At the tip of a branch rested a bird's nest, tranquil and unfazed with the world.

"Louis!" Harry clasped after his calf without contemplation. "Louis, you'll scare the birds!"

Louis caved with magnificently little fuss, grappling thinner offshoots for support on descent. His feet hurdled at the grass. With furrowed brows, he brushed off some bark by his left shoulder.

"Plus, they might mistake you for their nest." Harry tried in order to enliven the mood, and the fun from yesterday's excursion. "Your hair?" He pointed feebly when the reply lingered. "Like ... a nest."

Things made sense inside of Harry’s head, but said aloud it wasn’t always as funny as imagined. It all depended on how Louis took it, really, and now, clapping his hands free of rind, his eyes rose to level his, and Harry found them the most peculiar shade of grey. The pale tufts of hair on Louis' head were like the goose feathers from their cabin's pillows. Disorderly. Flyaway.

“You’re silly.” Louis padded onto the dirt road and jolted a pebble off straight ahead in the process. But quirking his lips at a neighbouring nettle, eyes switching from grey to blue, it didn’t look like Harry had said something stupid.

An adjoining trail emerged from a thicket down the lane. It forked with theirs, making onward path line more narrow, and Harry found himself tracing Louis' steps like a cadet.

Tassel flowers and Danish orchids sputtered across the cornfields, a wind-touched blanket of scurvy grass spanning in the far distance. Up the dirt path rose sword-leaved helleborines, complementing the white, and stolidly immune to the odd tractor wheel’s smothering touch.

"We're thinking of going for a swim," Louis informed vanward.

"Oh. OK ... What do we swim in?"

"Underwear?" He saw Louis' shoulders shrug. Something about him was different from yesterday.

Then he noticed Louis' shorts, and the panty line they covered beneath. Harry's own was dark blue and neither not too tight, not too loose. Pure luck. His other ones were saggy and washed out. It's not like anyone but himself would ever see them, but jeez ... They’d docked Denmark for two days and he already found it impossible not to be self-conscious amidst the Danes pressed slacks and pretentious coffee bars with ecological rye bread with minimalistic spreads and ... all that sort of Scandinavian finery.

He dipped his head to see beyond Louis' frame.

At what he imagined the end of the world (a steep, ultramarine fall into nothingness) knit the branches of two great pines from each their side of the trail's end.

Cobalt water shimmered there.

 

Niels, Kristian, Jørgen, August and Niall had set to forward crawl to a floating dock bobbing in an approximate middle of the strait. Gauging their pitchy shrieks, Harry assessed the temperature as a happy medium of cold and bone-freezing.

Louis got to undress on the miniscule patch of sand before the water, folding his socks neatly inside his shoes and ducking to unbutton his shorts. Leeches lurked already by the shoreline, and once Harry got off his gear, they offered more than enough encouragement to splash out for the lads and the safety of the sea - feet slipping off the ground for the first few crawls.

There, a seize got him at once; that familiar, electric tickle down his belly as the dense ocean mass turned him weightless.

“ _Leeches._ ” He heard Louis grumbled behind.

“Don’t be scared,” Harry allayed, chin skimming the water surface, “they’re very slow.”

“As slow as you?” Louis' arms cut the surface in cultivated strokes. After a quick dip of the head, he emerged with droplets sailing down his cheeks in crisscross, passing him.

“We’ll see who’s the slowpoke here.”

“Will we?”

Harry rolled onto his back for a try at being upper hand. “Yep. You wait and see.” Harry’d never actually threatened someone before. It was harmless, though. He hoped Louis wouldn’t-

An ample amount of pond hit his face. He sputtered, blinded.

“Waiting!” Louis pedalled off on his backside, gratified gleam to his face. In urgent need for remediation, Harry flicked back what teetered out to a few humble droplets.

“Wow… Wouldn’t want to get into a water fight with _you_!” Louis drawled sarcastically, “Or like, with water balloons. ‘Coming to get ya!’” he bumped make-belief water balloons at Harry’s shoulder. “’Here I am, beware! I’m bumping my water balloon at you, better get out of my way before you get many, many bumps!’”

While Louis smirked, Harry wasn’t sure what his own facial expression resembled. Twitching lithely to the side, Louis ambled up the steel ladder of the bobbing dock. They were there already.

 

“What are you guys talking about?” Niels asked easily.

“ _Girls._ ” Louis winked.

“Watch your mouth then, Eleanor would, like ... kill you or something.”

Harry took the last icy step before meeting the sun-warmed wood of the deck.

"We'll see what I'll do with her." Louis said cheekily. It both looked and sounded funny, Harry thought. And they hadn’t discussed girls at all.

"But imagine though." Niall dabbed a streak of spit of his cheek, "Who _wouldn't_ marry a prince? They must be chasin' ya?"

Louis lay on his belly with chin to the moss embroidering the fleet's steel. "I'm so young." He didn't say anything for follow up.

"Enjoying your freedom. Wise choice." August squat to pat his bronze-tanned hand against Louis' tailbone. Harry hadn’t heard him speak much, only recognized the curls at his nape; a contrast to his glossy and sweepy hair. Squinting at the sun, his steel blue eyes morphed remarkably bluer.

“Thomas isn’t.” Jørgen uttered. “Did you hear? Got himself a _boy_ friend. It’s the Odense-guy. The one with tattoos.”

“Camilla is gay too. Or ... is it called gay also if they’re lesbians? I saw her kissing Ulrikke at Hans’s party last month. Camilla is way hotter than Ulrikke, though. Ulrikke looks like a dude.”

“She does.” Louis chortled from the planks.

“It’s normal to be gay, though.” August added, pats shifting ever so daintier. “My cousin is gay, two of my friends are gay. Celebrities are gay. Politicians. Lots of people are gay.”

Harry's gaze travelled from August and Louis to the inlet separating land and strait when suddenly stricken with knifelike wind from east, unleashing a quiver that soundlessly alerted everyone's attention. Their staring lay just north of _wimp_ and _Brits._

"Horrible winds, Denmark!" Niall toddled for the ladder, ever jovial. "Get back before the rain hits?"

August detached off Louis' body. "All in," he affirmed, not halting to meet anyone's eyes as he dove gracefully into the dark blue ocean, ballerina-ish twitch to his ankles just before he vanished out of sight. _But he'll reappear,_ Harry’s conscience added in remorse of a preceding thought.

He shuffled at the side to sink his toes into the water, and his body lay adrift into the now tepid current.

 

For each take his ears submerged in the water. Below air, everything was muted and olive. The boys' shouts and laughter were of a different world then. Ahead, he caught the eye of a backstroking blonde. Louis. He was smiling at him but Harry couldn't seem to find the will to reciprocate. Water clad his chin and mouth - were he to smile, to curve his lips just the tiniest bit, it'd stream in and get swallowed.

As if the ocean couldn't carry him after all. That he wasn't meant for it, or it for him.

Silly, silly thoughts.

“What should we do after this?" Harry said, intended for everyone to hear. "Are you doing something with Eleanor?”

Louis quirked, halting imperceptibly behind the others. “Why would you think that?”

“Cause she’s your girlfriend?”

“Oh, come on, it’s not like it’s love.”

"El's clingy. Quite annoying," August supported, gliding in from our of nowhere. "But she's ... OK, this is quite gross, I guess, Louis' third cousin, and they've sort of been set up from birth."

“You’re lucky,” Louis said before Harry could inquire, “you can be with who you want.”

“I don’t want anyone.” He pursed his purple – soon blue – lips. They had, without being aware, drifted inwards to the water bushes, and Harry felt panic from what may lay underneath. If there were leeches as soon as by the shallow water, then what might be here amongst the bushes? 

“And how does _that_ work?”

“I just don’t get involved with that type of thing.”

“With love? Can you actually decide that?”

“Sure I can.”

“Don’t you find that sad?”

“Why is it sad?”

“You’re missing out.”

“On losing?"

“On loving.”

“No, you always lose if you love someone. Either you die first or the other dies first. Or you break up. Or you fall in love with someone else and you’re left in pieces. Or the person you maybe love is already with someone else and won’t break up with that person.”

“Uh … Ding, ding, ding?” He knocked on Harry’s forehead. It was rather forceful. “ _Communication_ , Harry. If you have good communication, you can talk about plenty of other things than, say, the weather. Or tea. You can discuss what each of you want, how you’re gonna make it happen, and you can plan a future together. Does that scare you, is that it?”

“I’m not scared of that. I just don’t want to lose, is all.”

“Well, if you find a person who can guarantee you that you’ll never lose them, I’d hold on to that person.”

Harry peered at him, having drifted completely into the tangled vegetation. The water weltered between them, kissing their lips. If only they could breathe under water, Harry pondered, it would feel like floating in the air. Easy and light.

“I promise,” Louis was stern. “Don’t you know, we don’t fall in love with a person, but with the thought of them. Like a dream of a dream. I learned that in literature class.”

“Exactly!” Harry splashed his left hand frantically in the water, like suddenly forgetting how to stay afloat. His ringlets had gotten thick and black, bobbing in the slots of Northern Sea Oats. Translucent skin beneath his arms displayed silvery veins, like on a water-nix, Louis thought. “That’s super sad, it’s not even _real_!”

“No, I mean… If you fall in love with someone then they are a dream, so you’re in the dream,” Louis clarified, adding, “I can’t imagine anything better than that,” to seal the deal and case close-it and not hear a word from Harry again of how love isn’t real or for him or possible. What gibberish.

Slow-pedalling underwater, their noses hovered just above sea level as they joined with the others who were now having a kick about with a conch shell. It lobbed off into the Oats, and at that, they decided to call it a day. 

 

Fine sand glued to their bedewed Converse and Vans. Harry felt it churn inside his socks.  

Louis looked about to disclose something with him. Maybe he wanted to discuss Moods Of Norway onepieces, or mention picturesque landscape destinations in the land of glacier waterfalls as he’d probably spent weeks in vintage cottages in, like, Switzerland. He kind of looked like someone who’d enjoy that.

“I’ve always wanted to be a cameleer.”

Or just something else all together.

"Train conductor for me," August paired.

"A diving instructor." Niall chipped in. "Most beautiful office in the world!"

“What do you want to be, Harry?” August asked just as Niels was about to speak.

Louis viewed him from where they were walking right next to each other.

Harry gazed at the ground, feet shifting to kick a pebble down the dirty road. "Maybe I just want to be with someone fun and do amazing stuff."

Jørgen and August quirked in piqued amusement, but Louis’ chin went high as he was musing out at the thick clouds. “That’s what most want, isn’t it? That's what I want too.”

“Yeah. Like this,” he said, arms wavering around to suggest the nature but eyes cast on Louis’ red Vans.

Louis laughed softly. "You want this for the rest of your life?"

It was so simple: a spread of red velvet, chestnuts barely holding on to their branches, a clear blue sky and nowhere to go. "But you belong to the sea, remember?" Louis’ squeezed his nape lightly, then motioned to his right and out of his vision. Before Harry could decide whether he’d even physically felt it or if it hurt like hell, Louis commandeered from the front; "Let's go, guys," as they took on their quest to run up the hill and home.

The sun fell down the horizon behind them, saying its farewell, but that didn't matter to Harry. The fields weren't necessarily where he wanted to be.

 

*

 

Mounting the hillock, they decided on where to meet next time, and who’s turn it was to buy vodka on some event that Saturday. Once settled, Louis' mates scampered cross the gravel parking lot onto a bus stop. Their incumbent lift came trucking up the corner in a speed that could possibly reverse time. With it, drizzle appeared from nowhere; not a single cloud in the sky.

“How do you get home, Louis?” Niall asked, brows popped and genial, hands tucked leisurely in his pockets.

“Call my driver, I think. Max.”

Before Harry could entwine a follow-up in their exchange, Niall suggested he join them back to the cargo for coffee and hot dogs. “I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want cof-”

“Won’t say no to a cup of Joe!” Louis cheered, abnormally enthusiastic to a rather bland proposal, Harry thought. Coffee was fucking disgusting. “Sorry, I watch a lot of American TV series ... You know, to learn the language properly. I’ve always wanted to say a cup of Joe in an everyday conversation.”

“You should watch British shows, mate. Harry, what shows should he watch?”

“Pointless?”

“Why? I’m getting better each month!” Louis crossed his arms, hip jutting out.

“No, Pointless is a quiz show,” Harry placated, surprised at the pure hurt Louis seemed to portray, heel digging the gravel and everything.

“Which is boring as hell. God, no, Louis. Better stick to Fresh Prince of Bel Air or summat for a while, hey?”

“Alright.” He ducked his head and smiled sweetly. “ _Yo_.” He bat his lashes up at them, as if proud and chary at the same time of knowing the slightest form of slang, could it even be called that.

“See! Already getting there.” Niall pat his hand to his nape and shepherded him down the footpath, Harry in tow.

 

*

 

“Look what we’ve found washed up on the shore!”

A simultaneous roar of greeting met Louis. Seven sailors sat throughout the smallest living room he’d ever seen. On a rectangular table with chequered tablecloth were lit tapers and chewing tobacco, and a few pair of resting feet.

In the far corner was what looked like a camping stove, and three shelves of mugs – of which none was identical to the neighbouring mug.

Waft of old fish came from there.

“Does Arthur know ya here?” A stout man said from the end. His voice rumbled rasp and sharp, and his eyebrows had a permanent arched expression. Louis didn’t know how to read him. With practiced lip balance, his cigarette twirled from side to side in his mouth as he spoke. 

“Uhm ...” Louis said. “No?”

He’d never think the room would be quiet enough to hear his tottery voice, what with all the bangs and echoes off the currents below, but his words were all he could hear right now.

“Not good. What’ve we got, responsibility for ya know? No, we don’t!” He shifted the position of his foot.

“Pfff ...” A younger-looking, skinny man drawled right to Louis’ left. “Just a boy! Here on this boat, that is, here you’re just a boy. No worries.” He winked.

“That’s Opie,” Harry murmured at his ear, nudging at the man who had just spoken, “horrible breath, don’t get close, and that’s Ulrich, that’s Gregory, Sebastian, Tim Tam, ‘cause he’s Australian, Archibald, but don’t worry, he’s harmless, pegleg, see?, and the captain, Hallval. Norwegian, but two women in Edinburgh and eight offspring all together.”

“ ... Sailor’s blood in your veins, lad!” Opie, Louis recalled, called enthusiastically. “Cnut the Great, Ivar Widefathom, King Christian III, Harald I ... hell, your uncle’s up to something, too, in’ he? Richy Rich? Got that yacht two fortnights ago?”

Louis puzzled. Uncle Richard? Yacht? Wasn’t he high up his ears with debt? Louis'd only attended one economy class and still understood the nonsensicality in purchasing a swamp-grounded golf course.

“I don’t know,” he cleared his throat after unuse, “but I’m a big fan of the sea, anyway, like the Battle of Trafalgar. Uhm… Wars at sea. You know. And ships. I have a paint-”

“Harold!” Awful Archibald hollered. Louis steeled himself for yet a reproach. “Show Princess the library, and dig out the maps, will ya? Off ye go, we’re rolling weed. Not for young’ns. Go, go. Shush!”

“Come.” Harry escorted him back out on deck again, veering left to a spiral, narrow ladder. A nook of two wide shelves stood at the far end. Louis assumed it the ‘library’. Niall clambered after, with a leafy green foil poking out his shirt pocket.

“Niall, no,” Harry rolled his eyes, clearly used to the mannerisms on board.

“Don’t worry – just lighting a small one up for meself. You’re not getting any!” He jotted his index haphazardly at them both. “Precious prince and precious future captain. Protecting you will be a task I’ll carry on my own two shoulders. And _fine,_ I will also carry the load of some scarce patch of weed, and even _smoke_ it just so you won’t have to!”

Harry grinned back at him – which to Louis looked even cannier – and something felt wearisome about the whole situation. Like new territory and different codes.

“We have the details about the Trafalgar battle in our log book.” Harry placed his attention back on him, informative and innocuous; maybe Louis had imagined the impish look he’d given Niall, which had given the impression Harry was no stranger to weed. Maybe he’d never touched such a thing. “I like to bring it to my bed and read in it at night.”

“Some like porn, Hazza likes Trafalgar.”

“Shut it, Ni.” Harry grinned, more to the floor than them.

“Or, it’s probably more accurate, like, some jerk off to oiled up breasts on a screen but Harry jerks off to masts. The more spars, the better!”

Louis didn’t fully get what all those words were. Jerk ... spars? He wasn’t sure how to act back. Laugh? Huff?

“Here ... we have Kronborg fortress.” Niall hoisted open the thickest book Louis’d ever lay his eyes on. “Maybe you learned this in school? It’s Danish history. And here’s something on Christiansborg castle. Hold on.” He proceeded to roll up his weed gingerly, setting it alight. “Let’s see ... Build in 1170 ... Oops. The Hanseatic looted the castle in 1368 and took over Copenhagen. Sorry, Lou. There’s been loads of moonlight acquisitions like that, though ... Why can’t humans just function together? And ... On February 26th 1794, there was a fire by the future king’s chamber ... Another fire on October 3d 1884 ... caused by a masonry heater in the Parliaments Hall ...”

Through the windows rose the moon up high. But it usually did, now that it was June. Sometimes Louis could even see both the moon and the sun at once.

Niall yawned from the puff pillow. It yanked entirely right, weltered from wear and sea. “Gonna hit the sack, I reckon. Lovely to meet you again, Louis.” He lobbed the leftover roll through a bull’s-eye, rattling Louis’ hair on his walk past. “Hazza.” He shot his right arm up in the air and plodded face forward for the stairs, disappearing with each step.

 

“He gets like that when he’s high.” Harry cocked a brow, “Everything is veeery lovely, and veeery pleasant. The world is veeery peaceful,” Louis giggled, “and veeery kind to aaall animals and aaall humans.”

“I don’t know much about weed.” Louis wanted to come clean, so to speak, in case Harry thought he was well versed with the world’s narcotic consumption. “I only know that it makes your mind go hazy.”

“It’s not for everyone. I think, for me personally, I don’t get how some people who drink can be so against weed, you know? But I do get that some prefer alcohol over weed. That’s a different matter. But they’re both substances of abuse. Except marihuana can be a pain reliever.”

“So can alcohol,” Louis informed, stricken with an odd urge to fend alcohol’s reputation. “My friend Johan once broke up with his girlfriend, and he was sad for weeks until he got really drunk at a party. We went to the highest bridge in Copenhagen and lay down on the footpath so we could hear the car wheel’s rush straight by our heads. He said it was the happiest he had been for a long, long time. Like the world wasn’t spinning but just racing. Like he was in a race.”

He peered at Harry for reply. His brows loomed hooded over a Science Of Cartography booklet, forelock dried up frowzily. The moonlight aged him a decade, Louis thought. Something about the silence made Louis feel so horribly naive. _My friend Johan once broke up with his girlfriend,_ replayed in his head with the voice of a kindergarten child. _Like the world wasn’t spinning but just racing._ And this wasn’t the only stuff Louis’d said to Harry today. Gosh, he’d climbed an apple tree just for kicks? He’d tried to inspire Harry with a pep talk on _love_? And yesterday ... oh, god. Flashes of Axe deodorants had spun in his brain all night.

“Yeah.” Harry’s breath brought to life the coat of dust on the page before him. “I ... Uhm. I got the Trafalgar log up in my room, if you’d want to see.”

“Seriously? Yeah, maybe we can go see?” he enthused, eyes maybe a little nervous. Few knew how fascinating wars at sea actually was to him.

“Yes, but let’s be quiet. We’ll be passing fourteen sailors’ cabins, and most are asleep.”

“Or jerking,” Louis winked – testing his English to see if he’d got it right.

“Or jerking.” Harry smiled.

 

They tramped into the chilly second deck’s welded steel and industrial smells. Nearing the aft, Louis followed Harry up a ladder-like step. Once on top, a thin mattress lay inches away. Louis nearly fell head first onto an octopus printed pillow case.

“There are raindrops on your pillow.”

He heard Harry swallow from somewhere in the darkness, a slit of moonlight tinting him from the porthole. Or maybe it wasn’t moonlight on this side of the cargo. It was more a foggy blue, and now parts of Harry’s knitted jumper (was he wearing wool in  _June_? When had he put that on?) was foggy blue too.

“Here,” he tussled back to the berth and lit a paraffin lamp, hovering it above page 289 of a worn out and burned-at-the-edges log book, heavy and with edges jutting into Louis’ left thigh. “Trafalgar. And never mind the pillow, it’s always a tad humid.”

Louis couldn’t remember if Harry’s voice had been this low all along. Truthfully, he couldn’t remember too many details of today at all. He regarded Niall’s weed with even larger suspicion ...

“Harry.” He heard himself say. For whatever reason.  

“Your accent’s so posh,” Harry chortled.

“ _Posh?_ ”

“Yes, monsieur,  _posh_.” He chin rose haughtily, casting him a once-over glance.

“That’s French, actually.”

“Poteto, potato.”

“I just studied in England for a bit, is all.”

“Oh.” Harry let his shoulders slacken, and set to chew his lower lip; a common pastime, “Where about?”

“Hampshire. I was sent there, sort of. Like a boarding school, but for two semesters only.”

“And you’re a prince. Arthur told me. And I’ve kind of picked it up, I mean ...”

“Uhm, yeah … here. In Denmark. But I won’t be king anytime soon because I’m second in line for that. And my parents are divorced so I can choose if I want to be royal at all,” Louis supplemented, almost apologetic. “Do you think it’s weird?” he said, noting Harry’s disbelief.

“Well, yeah, no, I don’t think it’s weird. It’s just… I’m in bed with a prince," he meant to state but it came off as a question.

“Yeah, here’s your shot,” Louis winked, rolling his eyes.

“Aren’t you supposed to be all shielded with guards and stuff, though? Hid behind an electric but stately fence and, I dunno, toss your hair down a window and hope someone join you up there in a lonely castle?”

“It’s true, yeah. But that’s been a huge problem actually.” Harry straightened, forehead immediately set to crease. “It’s been that way for years and no one knows what to do about it. See,” he shook his head. “Won’t grow.”

Harry’s eyes widened for a second or two. “Ha. Ha. Aren’t we just hilarious ... ” He nipped at Louis’ nose blithely. “OK, so …I’m sitting here talking to a prince… and I’ve dragged him into my dirty bed, in this smelly room,” Louis folded his knees to his chin, at once wildly thrilled, “and I’m showing him our log book which we suspect may have lice in it, and my room smells with beer …”

“It does, it does!” Louis giggled through the cleft of his knees.

“ … And I can’t offer him anything else but unsalted peanuts.” He snatched over a packet by the pillow.

“Well, well, well." Louis’ face morphed with hammy displeasure. " _Unsalted_  peanuts. Not sure if I can stay here any longer, must I be honest.”

“Oh, please do stay. I’d do anything to make you stay, dear prince.”

“Hm… Whatever could change my mind?”

“Here, let me read for you, Your Royal Highness.”

“Yes, alright, that might do!”

Harry lowered the lamp to the pages, skimming swirls and lines of ink. “The Battle of Trafalgar.” He cleared his throat. A clang sounded from below deck, followed with a row of swearwords Louis could’ve never made up, not even in his wildest dreams. “October 21st 1805 – hey, that’s when we met!” he erupted. “October 21st!”

“It was! That’s strange actually.”

“Yeah!” Harry settled for a sombre tone, “Let me announce to you, the list of signals used by Lord Nelson on that very date in that very battle.”

“I am patiently await. I mean … I am patiently waiting.” Louis folded his hands in his lap, perking to adjust his bum more comfortably.

“Title: ‘Single and Double Pendants. Distinguishing Pendants of the Mediterranean Fleet’. So, here it then says, Neptune, Lively, Royal Sovereign, Aurora, Africa, Zealous, Juno, Nimble, Ajax, Conqueror, Spartiate, Etna, Victory, Defiance, Orion, Defence, Achilles …”

Louis faked a loud yawn, “I guess it’s one of those things where you’d have to be there to get it. Because this sir, is rather boring.”

“Oh, I bore you, do I? My apologies, Royal Highness Prince. I was only reading to make you happy.”

“But I am happy. I really am.”

“Even in the presence of unsalted peanuts?”

“Especially in their presence.”

“Is that so …” Harry leaned in to Louis’ face, the previous indefinable grin plastered to his face.

“That is so.” Louis contained a giggle. He knew it would be extra loud, possibly accompany spit.

Harry clapped the book shut. “Then so it is.”  Their shoulders brushed, and the sheets had finally gotten comfortably warm.  “So… Uhm. Maybe we should go back? Before your folk wonder where you are?”

“Yeah, of course!” Louis nodded because naturally. Of course.

 

“So you don’t have a last name, do you?” Harry asked on their way back across the harbour.

“Uh…” Louis tried to come off uncertain but everything about him oozed confidence; his stance was demanding like it took claim of the ground he stood on, and his narrow chest took up more space than any of the other men Harry was working with. “The tenth,” he rolled his eyes.

“ _The tenth_.” Harry mocked; simply had to, tongue poking.

“Hey!” Louis jolted. Harry giggled again, swaying slightly.

Following Harry back out to the cargo, and preparing to run quickly through the woods to get home without being murdered (Louis always feared the worse, because then the worse wouldn’t usually happen), he wasn’t really done with seeing Harry. “So ... I’ll come by tomorrow, OK? How long are you staying here?”

“Three more weeks.”

Something in Louis froze. “Meet me by the streetlights over there at the rocks,” he pointed to a singular lamp lining the asphalt and the quarry, “tomorrow at dawn. So they won’t notice you’re out of bed.”

“OK.”

Louis’ eyebrows arched up in a bow, like he was waiting for something more, and he took two lagging steps from Harry. It caused Harry to laugh, which tickled his lungs so he laughed some more. Louis giggled in return.

“Where do you live?”

“Just up the road and through the woods.”

“It’s a castle, isn’t it? I was so right ...”

“No-o ...” His feet swivelled eights in the harsh gravel. “It’s more like a villa thing. Like a large house.”

"Oh. I see."

"Yeah."

"OK."

Ocean wind assisted their chat, having gone all quiet. Harry made direct eye contact with him, and they managed to hold it like that a few seconds. "I know it's you, you know." He said.

"I know it's you, too."

"OK. I just wanted to make sure."  They smiled in each their direction.

"Alright. I'll see you tomorrow, then."

He set off.

"Bye." Harry cast the word out there a bit too late, and it stayed rooted to his spot. He turned on his heel, checking his pocket watch as if it was already too late to reach the streetlights by daybreak.

 

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by June Hymn by the Decemberists. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KusWM9AKfZg)
> 
> //You're standing on the landing with the war  
> You shouldered all the night before  
> And once upon it  
> The yellow bonnets  
> Garland all the line  
> And you were waking  
> And day was breaking  
> A panoply of song//
> 
> *inserts mental emojis of sunrays, waves and a leaf and sprinkle the scent of lilac on your face*


	6. you may take my eyes

“He does that sometimes.” A straw of hay alternated left and right in Niels’ mouth. “Not his fault, or anything. Just early bird duties.” He gave a loose shrug. "You know.”

Harry glommed the rosé tight to the nook of his elbow.

The rosehip hedges ghosting his side glittered by the purple light of the horizon, igniting the buds’ pigment. They led upwards to a grand plot which Harry glanced over for overview; only three sets of stone brick stairs to go. Up there, fairy lights dressed spiral shaped shrubs into beautiful emerald and pink. Sounds of genial chitter-chatter streamed from inside the fort-like abode nested amidst it all, but despite the amenity it offered, the lump in Harry’s chest had clambered all the way to his throat. There was something _quiet_ about it all (save the ringing crickets from deep in the perfectly mowed horde of grass and the rhythmic click-clack of Niels’ patent leather shoes). He peeked down to find white roses and lilacs reflect on them. The shoes stopped.

_QuietQuietQuiet._

Niels banged the brass ring pull in three expeditious clonks. A courteous gentleman (it being the best - the _only -_ word in which to describe him), opened the door with timid welcome, the vacancy of a smile leering above a smart bow-tie. His shaven head tucked inside a shimmering topper – an unmistakable Downtown Abbey vibe to the whole thing.  

Behind the man (gentleman) was an arched doorway, welcoming an ember-lit living room, detailed stucco rosettes to the ceiling. Thick furls gushed from each corner of the roof and snaked thinner and thinner towards the middle where they assumedly slot together; Harry couldn’t tell because a gigantic crystal chandelier hogged that exact spot, each its candle lit.

_1, 2 ... 10, 15, 20 ... 40 ... 52 ..._

Every glass object basked in the ray off the many lamps gracing the rosewood accent tables. Old and young people alike talked amiably amongst themselves, the aforementioned sipping champagne and golden hued spirits while alternating resting on each hip for some seconds at a time.

On the left hand wall was a gigantic portrait of a swan siding a masonry heater with a golden lid. Allowing just a moment to close his eyes briefly, Harry imagined a fully armed, Danish battalion in there, banging away at metallic grids. The clanging grew so loud, he found it necessary to open his eyes earlier than preferred.

 

"Harry! Still around?"

A delicate, white shirt grazed August’s body, a gold-embroidered cup his hand. The liquid shimmered ink black and swivelled heat up his white-as-paper ensemble. Trousers. Tie. Socks. _Everything._

"Not that I mind, that's not what I meant!" And bleached teeth. Tan ten times more protruding than yesterday. Solid jaw. "Didn't expect you, is all."

"Well. Yeah. I'm here, so." Harry rose the glass of rosé he’d just been served from a literal silver plate.

"And your friend? Neville?"

"Niall's on cleaning duty. At the cargo."

"Ah." A grimace visited and left his face. 

“Augie!” Niels sauntered forward, brown-leathered cigar etui in his hand. He still smelled of woodland and hedge, and Harry assumed he’d been standing left chatting up some the girls outside who'd been by the terrace. Speaking of which. Kristian and Karl were being swallowed in a throng of girls cackling at all sides, further in by the kitchen's pantry, obviously sneaking sips of vodka. They didn’t seem the least bothered by either prospect.

In equal lack of understanding personal space, a girl with long, corkscrew curls and haughty look to her lazy, brown eyes was siding up with Louis. A silver tea pot obscured his frame from where Harry was standing, but it was most definitely him. She looked like she could be his sister, or cousin, save the kiss. On the lips.

Louis' lips.

She twirled elegantly to the side, then, as one of her girlfriends approached to whisper something to her ear. This new girl was eyeing Harry, and something about the transmission of being watched whilst a possible subject of a back-fence chat into the depth of someone's ear was vaguely distressing.

Unaware of his eyebrows being bunched up, they eased as a fat cigar was jotted into Harry's mouth.

“Come,” Niels called, already out the door with August in tow.

 

They took stand on the slate decking further into the yard.

The whiff of grandmotherly perfume ambushed Harry’s face. “Ah! Niels! Og hans kamerat?” 

“Harry,” Niels accepted a man’s hand in solid shake. “He’s from England. Right, Harry? Louis’ says Norfolk?”

“Yep. Hi.” He parroted the gesture. It hurt.

“Lovely evening for a dinner party.” By the help of his blobby cheeks, the man’s eyes vanished into two streaks. “Quite serene!”

“Very! I mean, there are sounds, but still so peaceful,” Harry said, evoked by the comfort of not being the only one picking up on this.

“I see you’ve met.” Louis’ face popped out the door, eyes darting up and down Niel's and Harry's attire. “His name is Asger. I bet he hasn’t told that just yet.” It was deadpan and vaguely tired. His staring petered off into routine gazing.

“The stillness lives over there, don’t you know?” Asger ignored, nodding his head southward in what might cause a whiplash. Louis felt as though he spoke like they were children (and not fast approaching manhood; Louis had counted the days until his 18th birthday. 1573.) 

“No, it has a special source, where it comes trickling as it pleases.” The woman next to him winked. She was dainty and short, having stood half obscured by Asger’s wide back. “Somewhere out there in the woods.”

“Our little, flat, fairy tale land.” Asger cheered.

“Here you are! You know the other boys your age simply reek of Chanel No. 5, while you, Louis, you smell like a ripe pear tree in full bloom!” A plump lady manoeuvred her way to Louis. She had those kind of thin lips donned with purple lip stick, where Harry couldn't understand how none of it tinted off on her teeth, which were yellow.

She pecked his cheeks with a loud _bop,_ studded handbag smacking up against his hip.

“Oh, my god, I’m so sorry.” Louis leaned in to Harry soon as she'd scuttled along, entirely red.

“Don’t be sorry, Blossom Pear Tree. I've always wondered just what perfume you use.”

“I can’t believe no one’s commented on your locks yet.”

“I’ve been spared. I probably look like the black sheep here in blondie land.”

“Right." He portioned Harry's hair up in sections to cup in his palm. "Bouncy curls ... big eyes, pouty lips but not so pouty that they’re annoying,” his index skirted Harry’s upper lip, his jaw, “and a future captain.” His hand fell to Harry’s wrist, glomming strangely tight for a moment before letting go, face shunt. Bothered.

"Jo! Come meet Harry!" He exclaimed out of the blue, at once happier. A tall, wispy-looking man was urged forth by Louis.

“Johan.” His handshake was none the weaker, especially by contrast of his physique, along an apprehensive smile of crooked teeth.

“Harry.”

“You’re a traveller, I hear?”

Harry stood perplexed for a moment.

“I’ve told him,” Louis murmured, “and I mentioned it to my sister and my brother and my cous-”

“You aren’t by any chance interested in trawlers? Say, our Indian Ocean fleet, working as crew? We're bringing in mackerel and big eye tuna for the upcoming season.”

“I … That sounds amazing, actually. I've never worked on those.”

“The _Indian_?" Louis' reaction came on instinct. "That’s a swell idea, let’s ship him off to real life Pirate Bay!” He stared dumbfounded. They’d barely gotten to a first name basis. And treating Harry like he was something to be shipped to begin with ... What a shocking streak coming from his step father. Except not at all.

“It’s alright Louis, I do have a thing for the sea in general. Cargos, yachts, trawlers ...”

It didn't help that both he and Johan looked at him with eyebrows athrill, as if they'd just unearthed the greatest idea known to man.

How dandy.

“I even have a tattoo.” Harry lowered his surprisingly elastic neckline – well, that’s what you get for using the same shirt weeks in a row, Louis thought – flashing an anchor across his chest. His heart. Johan complimented its originality and detail, and suggested him yet an evening cigar. Apparently it was Columbian this time. Boli. Louis could only stare at their exchange. He’d never been allowed as much as a dry cigarette.

 _Whatever_.

Harry soaked up the air with his mouth, thinking it strange to stand on an open deck with abundant shrubs overflowing onto the villa as the tainting of alcohol and cigars lay an invisible blanket over it all. Yet the air was crisp as winter, he sucked in another breath; exquisitely vacant and free. The brunette came over for Louis then, motioning for his arm as if to get him in private. Louis ducked his head for what she had to say, excused himself from the group and bolted round the vines.

Harry seemed to only pick up the tiniest bits and pieces of Johan's information on the trawler - he wasn't actually thinking of going. He'd worked on a trawler one time earlier in his life, and the reek of equator heated mackerel'd been repulsing to him. Besides, his feet itched. Stomach, too. And hands.

Niels stepped down the path of Louis' direction with another mate, and Harry found himself compelled to follow; him now being the only teenager left with the adults.

“Oh, don’t let us oldsters keep you! Go on, young people, go be wild and foolish! And try the snaps!” He gave Harry’s bicep a quick squeeze on his departure. Before he could say anything, a tall glass of scotch had been handed to him, and not wanting to carry it on, he took it all in one go, wincing at the acid flavour.

It released a brawl of laughter from the men, and with a flushed, apologetic face, he trotted backwards out their sight.

 

His fingers bumped into the vines fencing the masonry, and tracking them, he ended up all the way to the other side of the mansion. A lengthy terrace stretched out before endless cropland; luscious, rosy grapes drooping weightily by the banisters. Burgeoning groups of grape and apple practically burst out their branches. In the centre frolicked all of three Great Danes. 

Noise of a younger ensemble cackled from the terrace, and with grateful steps, he two-stepped up the staircase.

He couldn't pinpoint anyone at first, though August was right by the banister and talking to a guy with cropped hair and rose petal lips. Harry manoeuvred through.

“Hey." He said waggishly, winking at once he located Louis. He wouldn't denied if it anyone'd suggested he'd be tipsy. "You’re not supposed to go away from me.”

“Oh, did I?” Louis chirped. He beckoned and reached for Eleanor to hold tightly around her waist. Harry felt dumfounded for some reason, decided not to ponder too much about it. And where was Jørgen? Kristian?

Out of the blue, a server appeared at Harry's side, offering another flute.  

"Anyway, I can't believe you actually came. I thought this would be your idea of drudgery."

"Drudgery! My, my."

"My English skills only enhance." He rolled his eyes, grinning up a white, cone-shaped patio heater. In the motion, he let go of his date. Eleanor. Surely, this was her.

"Your planning skills, however ..."

"My planning skills?"

"You know, I usually wake up early. But not 4 AM early. Not crack of dawn early to meet you by a streetlight as the sun peeks. Not I-can't-feel-the-ground-I'm-walking-on-because-I'm-half-a-zombie-at-this-time-of-day early. You _did_ know that, right?"

Louis giggled.

Harry's lips twitched involuntarily. He found the sun looming silent by a hillock miles away, in the dip of Louis' shoulder, and it took him by surprise that it was dusk already. The heater illuminated their skin to orange and gold.

"I'm really sorry. Seriously, I am," he nodded several times to himself, still grinning, "but I did send Max. You do remember _that_ , right?" He teased.

 

Boy, did he. A bloke the size of a mountain rock had held fort by the very streetlight Harry had to wait for Louis at. Once there, the stout visage had neared Harry, step by earth-shaking step, and spoken with the voice of The Groke (had it actually had one; Harry couldn't recall to ever have heard it speak); "Louis is hunting mallards this morning, as part of his Friday routine before school. His Highness is inviting you to a family gathering this evening, friends allowed, at Christiansborg manor. Here is your mutual friend, Niels' number." A neatly folded paper'd been given to him. "His Highness suggests you call this number at some point after 11 AM for further details."

Harry'd gotten it cleared later that Niels had skipped school to the point of failing the entire semester, and so decided to submerge fully into his snoozing habit.

 

"Why Niels' number?" Harry prodded, finding it the singular question on his mind.

"Why not Niels' number?" He still grinned. Sun gone.

"I wasn't there to meet Niels, anyway. Nor The Groke." Harry'd use that reference for what it's worth. It was quite funny. Possibly.

"The _Groke_?" Louis laughed up into the air.

Funny, then.

"You know Moomin?"

" _Moom-_ No, wait, yeah. The TV program from when we were kids? Where they're kind of hippos? We call it Mumitroldene."

"Mumitioaldena?"

Louis screeched. Harry made a mental note of keeping Moomin in mind as a conversation starter for parties and meet ups alike.

"Anyway, what I mean is that The Groke is the eerie, creepy creature who makes everything go cold and icy as she comes."

"We call it Muren. But I don't know if it's a lady, do you think? Or woman, I mean."

"Female," Harry jested.

"Chick."

"Bird."

"Madam!"

"Babe!"

"Baaabe," Louis chortled.

"Ooh, baby," Harry giggled back. "Senorita ... Lady Muehren?" He tried. He was pretty sure that's the way Louis'd pronounced the Danish word for The Groke.

Louis guffawed _again,_ though now Harry wasn't too sure whether Louis was laughing at or with. He looked engrossed by him either way.

“We should go to Udsigten.” The heavy lump of an arm fell onto Harry's shoulder.

“Yudseagen?” Harry replied Niels, at once uncertain in the scrutiny of every single pair of eyes. A little crowd had flocked towards them.

"A viewpoint in the woods," August rectified, because of course. Why not chip in only with the chance to correct someone.

“Yeah! Why not?" Another boy said. "The air's quite nice.”

“How about Bellevue?” asked Louis.

“Too far,” a pair of girls moaned.

 _Wuss,_ Harry couldn’t help but concoct in the analysis of their persona; maritime skirts ... polo shirts. Glasses held high and above the rest of the pitiful world they unfortunately had to share with billions of others. _The torture._

 

Only Louis, Harry, Niels, August, and the boy whose name was Peer, ended up taking off for Bellevue, orienting through the quiet farms and copses of the closest neighbourhood. A gravel path parted two grandiose farmlands just before the ocean came to view.

The setting sun laid a rosy glow on a row of wonky stones balanced all over each other, half obscured by nettles and oxeye daisy. A field of cabbage sectioned neatly beyond – all the way to a flannel clad scarecrow. Harry watched the faint arms of sunrays leave its cowboy hat, going chilled at once. The dried soil beneath his feet had gone scratchy; he didn't bother with wearing shoes due to their soles detaching more and more from the uppers. He'd might as well avoid the prodding of stones skipping into his shoes for every step he took.

“Måske er det tidlige efterår?” August spoke in that unfathomable Danish, eyes squinted at the breaking clouds. Pairs of swallows scoured for flies beneath the burdensome clouds. Rain loomed.

 

Bellevue was a long-stretched beach of sand and picnic-friendly terrain.

In the very distance of the sea kept the sun on going. It lit like a golden rose, Louis thought, however the cheesiness; delicate and seared at the edges. Sweet and blazing, an explosion of life.

Flecks of churned gold appeared to spill across the ripples, bellowing with the motions of a dance that mirrored the sunlight.

“This is where we swim,” Peer welcomed, hammer toes wading into Nivå bay. “Cold as fuck but never mind!”

Cold wind zipped past, or rather, through, Harry then. His body caught alive with something at that; itching to sense water to their flesh. He hurtled in. Even Louis, seemingly tentative of anything-below-tepid-temperature water, had that glaze to his eyes, shimmering back at Harry with all the blue in the sky.

His cheeks botched all up beneath thick streaks of eyelids, eyes entirely closed atop the widest, sweetest grin.

"Slowfox," he teased, and lay down on his back, letting the water break his fall. Harry closed the distance in pained tremor. The humidity spell of late May had done nothing for the world below sea, which gobbled at Harry’s skin to most likely eat him alive. Six excruciating wades switched on the primeval courage to finally splay his arms open, reaching the boys.

"Trout and crabs here." August was telling, arms bobbed lazily on the surface.

"I love crab. And bouillabaisse," said Louis.

August winced. "I hate fish. Tastes like a girl’s ... You know ..."

" _Ugh._ " Louis nipped water at his face. "Please don’t ruin my love for seafood! Thanks!"

"I like sausage."

August barked a chortle before Harry fully gauged the context he’d said that in.

"Good for you, mate." Louis slid over, patting him good-naturedly.

Harry sensed himself go helplessly red, growing hot in the emerald strait. He could spot the seaweed tango deep below, teasing the soles of his feet. _Still._

 

The sun vanished entirely by the next three minutes, and with tentative steps through shrubs of fresh dew, they parted. With Louis trailing soundlessly up behind him, Harry assumed it a sweet gesture to follow him home. Like some miniature guardian of sorts; a loadstar through wealds unknown.

They meandered south, down the very tip of the coastline. Distant whirring of motorways and mopeds swivelled from over the rooftops.

"I can’t believe you have a tattoo.”

“Oh. It's just a moth. ’s nothing.”

“It’s huge. It’s all over your chest. I want one too.”

“What would you want?” Harry turned briefly. Louis had his gaze locked at the heels of his feet in contemplative ponder. Harry hoped he didn't notice how dry they were.

“Something to do with freedom.”

“Like a bird?”

“Maybe. But I like the ocean. So maybe a ship, though that’s too big I think.”

“What about a rope?”

“That’s very sailor-y,” Louis concurred.

“And it means we’re friends. I have the anchor. You have the rope." It wasn’t a demanding proposal; just the truth. A factoid.

"Hm ... Would you come with, then?”

“Sure. Tomorrow? I know a guy. One of the sailors got a tattoo by him days ago. He’s very … open minded. Won’t think twice about your age.”

“Wow, no! That's way too soon! OK, I'm regretting already.” He laughed sweetly.

Harry smiled at him. 

“The cruise is harboured here, you know.” Louis aimed his index further down, over Harry's shoulder. He smelled like salt. “Wanna go check out the wreck? Or not wreck right now, but it will be once the pirates get to it. Which they will." He smiled sweeter. "With 100% certainty."

“Now?”

“Why, it’s a few weeks away when that thing leaves! Chop, chop!”

“You know … you think you speak British in a fluent accent, but here and there it gets a bit …”

“Off we go, my fine sir! No talking!”

Harry laughed, and simply overthrew his feet with moist dirt. “You are the fine sir, here, Mr. _Prince_.”

“You’re just jealous.”

A hand came tickling Louis’ waist, and he sprawled to the ground like a millipede though Harry'd barely used any force.

“Do I wanna be a prince? No.” Harry prodded his knee atop Louis’ left thigh, locking him still. Louis was kind of asking for it. “Am I the only authentic Brit here that gets to speak fluent Oxford English? Yes.”

“No!” Louis shook with laughter. “Everyone wants to be a prince!”

“Not Harry Styles!”

“What do you want, then? You want to be a king? You'd need a princess first. Just like princes need princesses and kings need queens and all that.”

It sounded to Harry as if Louis gibbered laizze-faire on which vegetable went best with which meat. Snow peas with chicken, carrots with fish ... beets with ox.

“So ... You’re gonna marry her just to have a queen?” It needn't be said, Harry felt, that this concerned Eleanor.

“Of course not, I’ll never marry her, or anybody.”

“How would that work, then? If you’re gonna be king?”

The cleft of Louis’ brows settled in an easeful curve, discordant to his answer; “I don’t know." He quirked. "You know if you'd marry me, you’d be a king.”

“First of all it’s not possible to be king and king, so your little plan there won’t work. Second of all, I don’t want the responsibility for a whole country on my shoul… No, wait. Second of all: you have a girlfriend!”

“The jealousy is just seeping from you ... I’m physically covered in it.”

Harry yanked Louis’ hand up to his own mouth. Using the whole flat of his tongue, he licked it. “Nope. You’re only covered in my spit,” he announced haughtily.

“I can’t believe you did that!” Louis screeched.

A flurry of visions bombarded the forefront of his mind then, of Harry leaving; departing off to Indian oceans, Asians for that matter, Northern, Atlantic, Pacific ... It felt as though there was nothing else but Copenhagen, though, right this very minute, and if they’d never see each other again then there was nothing to lose, surely? What would there be to regret? To be sorry about or to guard oneself for? He scrambled upwards to bite Harry’s neck.

“Fuck!”

Louis sneered and ran to where he had aimed his finger minutes ago.

“I don’t wanna go to the sea!” Harry wailed childishly. There was so much _something_ in his bones, he could barely hold back the need to sprint and jump and leap. And he loved the sea, deep down, so followed. 

 

A few tumbles out of a hedge, they emerged to soak up the view of howling waves and beaten cargos. They had an angry look to them, or maybe just impatience. Like the waves. A desolate and wonky-sided Brixham trawler ghosted eerily in the backdrop. It had the Danish maritime signal flag, flapping wildly at the stern. Louis clapped his hands together at the vision, feigning a cheerful glance at Harry. “Yippee!”

“Very funny.”

“No, seriously, it doesn’t look like a death trap at all. And blood thirsty pirates after your cash and organs? Silly scare! A conspiracy to keep people from enjoying the safety of the sea! When has anyone ever really _died_ at sea? Titanic was just a movie?”

“Shut up.” Harry laughed into his hands. And though he hadn’t actually been contemplating Johan’s offer as a serious undertaking, it would still mean money – possibly an ample sum considering it catered the royals – and more travels and also, a return. “It’s not like I know everything, or that I know where to go. I just have to go anyway, don’t I?”

Louis stilled in his side vision. Like the flick of a switch, his eyes had morphed from an assuring blue to worrisome and ashen.

“You know you change a lot during conversations,” Harry said.

“Do I? I find you're always just you.”

“What’s better?”

“To never change. To be oneself."

"It's good to change. It shows you're feeling something."

"I hate change. Were it up to me, I'd never grow a day older than 20. That's a magical age. After that, it's all downhill to 30."

"Auspicious, I like it."

A seagull soared above them, screeching for food maybe. Or her babies. His babies.

“I do have a bad feeling being here,” said Harry.

“There’s been some rapes down here,” said Louis soberly.

“Wow, really?”

“A few years back there was a man who knocked them senseless and then drove down here to … Yeah …”

“Disgusting.”

“Doesn’t bode well for the fortune of the ships at this exact harbour. Just saying.”

Harry found his thoughts drifting. Like the crab grass. “Why are you so scared of me leaving for the sea?”

“Am I?”

“Yes,” he jabbed lightly at his left arm. His cargo's harbour came in sight, and he felt relieved to be out of no man's land.

“It’s just big, that’s all. It’s a big sea. Did you know the planet’s 71% water? Can you imagine?”

“That’s what I love about it. It’s so vast and dark and no one knows much about it.”

“You’re not scared?”

“I’ve always been at sea. It’s gone alright.”

“And if this is the time it doesn’t?”

“Then I had a great time before it all went bad?”

Louis cocked a brow at him, smile warm. “Aw. You’re having a great time with me, is that what you’re trying to say?”

“Yeah. You and only you are the reason that my time’s been great.” Harry rolled his eyes. 

“I knew it. Well, if you die, I was the last person to have a great time with you, too.”

“Each other’s last,” Harry cheered with a make-belief glass.

“Shit, I forgot mine in Bellevue!” Louis realised.

“It’s make-belief, Lou. And why on earth did you bring it to Bellevue?”

“Cheers, then.”  He giggled, and raised a non-existent glass. “Each other’s last.”

“Last what?” Harry mused, mind deliciously empty.

“Well I know you have many friends. We can all be your last friends.”

They were talking like the possibly incumbent death of Harry was a thing so incredulous it tickled their stomachs, and maybe it was very wrong to feel a rush from depicting your own death. “No, I don’t have that many friends.”

“From home, maybe?” Louis’ tailbone rested against a metallic railing. They'd entered the harbour.

“Not real friends. It was more … Like, they were all into drugs and stuff.”

“Oh. Is that why you left?”

“Not really. But then something happened at home. Family stuff. And I just felt alone, you know. Like I needed to get away.” Much to his surprise, it didn’t feel weird saying it out loud, all though he was technically speaking to a lifebuoy hanging on a post in front of him.

“Bad friends, huh. They wouldn't support you through the bad time?”

“They didn’t really get it, I think. Which is fine, like… I moved there when I was 14, so. Felt like I had experienced everything in life, yet I was new to them. So I never really filled them in on everything, and I don’t think they’d ever get it.”

“What’s the mystery, then? What happened?”

“Just… Lost some family members, that’s all.”

Louis contained his response, so maybe Harry would talk some more. He didn’t. “Oh.”

“Was a bad family,” he elaborated then. “You know, moving a lot. Being poor a lot. By lost I mean, not dead or anything, just not present in my life, you know?”

“Do you miss them?”

“There’s no one really left.”

 “I’m so sorry.” Louis soothed with wispy strokes, gravitating closer. “I will be your overall best friend, then, your first and your last.” He hushed, and slow danced him around into a crossroads of mailboxes and recycle bins.

Harry’s laugh was sudden and maniacal, maybe because the whole situation felt morbid, like someone had placed him somewhere so random that it made sense. Just some days ago he'd been on the Ivory Coast, playing footie with a random kindergarten having a day out. And before that, in Stavanger, Norway, eating £24 worth of mussels in torrential rain.

“I knew when I met you that you were the strong type, you know,” Louis went on, letting him go and continuing on in their slow-paced plodding down the harbourside, “and that we should be friends.”

Harry looked over. Louis'd gone balancing dangerously close to the water's edge, stumbling on the cement's jutting gravel and kicking Harry's heart into overdrive. “I thought you looked 10,” Harry said. And it was the absolute truth.

“… _Such_ an idiot.” Louis shook his head, huffing, “I’m as far from 10 as you can get.”

“Well,” Harry placated. “You _feel_ older than 10.”

“What does that mean?”

"I dunno. That it’s weird knowing you. In a good way.” He found his left foot rooted at a manhole. This was it; his cargo's shadow swallowing their bodies from where it bobbed in the dusk.

“Not really. These things happen, you know. People meet people.”

“Not to me, usually.”

“Yes,” Louis advanced to bite his neck one last time, “to you.”

 _To me?_ Harry quivered by the spectral touch of his lips. He felt strangled by himself, if there ever was such a thing.

 

"Oya! Royal visit, 'n all!" It was Ulrich; the cargo's mechanic. Next to him sat Arthur with toes stretching gleefully into the water. Chief and Second officer Tim Tam and Sebastian was tinkering with some nuts and bolts on the cooling tarmac, and Niall was off to sleep, apparently.

A few deckhands meandered about the bows, giving the starboard a good scrub.

Harry snagged the Kim's Chips off Sebastian, before scampering inside to grab a couple of blankets for him and Louis. 

"Thank you." Louis said on his return, plodding gingerly down ot make a spot for himself and crunching quietly on some flakes.

"We're just about to watch the Perseid meteor shower." Ulrich joined the munching too, greasy finger jotted at the horizon. "Lovely light for it."

"They're from north-east." Harry explained, tucking a wollen blanket around their shoulders. "Where Perseus is. The constellation."

"The log's in the pub, you know," Arthur beckoned, "the one with the overview of 2006's meteor showers."

"We've got one on meteor showers passing the Swan constellation." Harry said. "The legend is that Zeus placed the image of Cygnus, which is the swan, up in the night sky. I don't know why. I'll figure it out, we have a Cygnus book in the library section."

"It's under Eric's pillow. The new guy. Better ask him beforehand. Moody fella." Tim Tam muttered.

"I wonder if they're all just aliens," Harry spoke on, "like ... that we are mixed? Aliens and humans and gods sand myths ... There're too many legends for none of them to be true?"

"We can only ponder." Said Arthur.

"Meteor showers are my favourite thing anyway. I like finding the ones that land on my birthday. No pun intended." Harry sniggered.

"They're a beauty," Tim Tam concurred gravelly, "best sky, winter sky."

The murmured gabber spread amongst itself, and Louis inched against Harry and the warmth and Kim's Chips; the music from the radio playing right behind their backs. "You're an astro geek." He noted, glomming a handful of crisps.

"And proud of it." Harry smiled, eyes kind and tired.

"I wonder which meteors are coming for my birthday. December 24th."

"When's your birthday, Harry?"

"1st of February."

"Oh. I'm sure that's nice."

Harry laughed. "Spectacular, I tell you."

"Yeah?" Louis giggled, bumping arm to arm. "The whole sky lights up for you?"

"Oh, yeah. The moon, the sun, the stars ... Everything peeks out at once just to congratulate."

"I bet."

A band played a heartfelt tune on the radio, and Louis felt it lull up his back and up into the silent air. Barely any chatter left. Louis thought the band sounded like they were playing inside a garage in the UK, in a small, coastal town with very cheap pints, cheaper than in Denmark, and with no curfews and no Max-es to watch over them.

He yawned.

After five more minutes they decided to call it a day, and ambled into the harbour in wait of Louis' personal driver.

 

"So he's one of the super few with the privilege of having your number," Harry commented, hands in pockets and eyelids fighting to remain open. He looked swaying in the light breeze.

"I just didn't want to give it so directly." It'd felt like an overstep just to hand out Niels'. Louis wasn't sure if sailors found phone numbers and cell phones silly and useless. That they got by by smoke signals and maritime alarms. "I mean, you can have it if you want. I just wasn't sure if you wanted?"

"Yeah, I want."

The wind fluttered easy in and out their shirts. It cooled the collarbones. Brushed up the wrists.

"Tell me yours and I'll call you, so you can save my number that way."

Harry did, and when Louis called he wondered how come there wasn't any sound.

"I usually leave it in my cabin." He explained.

"OK. I hope I called the right number, then," Louis giggled. A black Mercedes ambled down the alleé.

"I can text you once I get back to bed."

"Yeah. Do that."

"OK. Get home safe." Harry fell into a hug. Louis felt dumbfounded by the unforeseen closeness, nose all up in his ear. Weirdly, Harry swung fast back again, eyes distant, and smile all lost to the darkness.

 

With a last few handwaves, they separated, and Louis tried gathering what exactly had happened the past few minutes. Was he the only one not tired? He told Ivan, his designated chauffeur for the night, to amp up the radio but it was only Panic! At The Disco followed by Justin Timberlake's Sexy Back. _Like always._

By the turn near his home, a girl had won some monthly music newcomer event, performing Katy Perry's Dark Horse with nothing but her voice and a piano. Neck straining from the angle, Louis gazed desperately for the meteor shower. Churning up the driveway, he found it necessary to give up, slogging distracted and alert into the foyer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter named after Spiderhead by Cage The Elephant. It's pretty cool! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8DOKTX4EFY
> 
> //I've been waiting for answers for way too long,  
> Seems I'm always waiting around.  
> Spiders in my head, spiders in my mind,  
> You may take my eyes, but baby I'm not blind//
> 
>  
> 
> And; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWZ70lplIj0. I tried (I really did!) to find a decent cover from 2006 to keep it in line with the story, but this is a 2010 version. Oh, well! A random act, by the way, how Cascada became part of RoyalLouis and SailorHarry soundtrack, and a rather significant song to Louis later on. 
> 
> Also, I'm super naive as to the stretch of Danish coastlines. I'm assuming there's no way they'd be able to walk all the way from Bellevue down to Nordhavn where Harry's cargo supposedly lay docked, heh.


	7. to the river to pray

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's torrential rain but an upbeat song is driving us through this next part, weheeeeeey! 
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcm3g1zW8dk

The day was dreary and without inviting characteristics of any kind. The oaks drooped naked and crisp. Pitter patter of rain against Louis’ umbrella muted out his iPod (Coldplay – Always In My Head remix), yet echoes of cars whizzing by cut through clear as day.

He imagined him and Harry chase each other down the allée in race of reaching the exit, or do piggy back just for fun, or simply stroll in normal fashion, discussing titbits of the elaborate meteor discussion from last night. Harry and his crew sure knew their way around mythology. And astronomy. And ufology.

Louis dipped his head, sniffing the air. He’d always loved the rain.

A blotched out figure waved from further down the street, an unmistakable grin and careening, bolting steps.

_Maybe Harry loves the rain, too._

“I found us the leaflet!” Harry's gallop alluded to that of a rousing puppy, and Louis had to stand in his way, palm against chest – or a slippery wet, neon yellow fisherman jacket - in attempt to stop him from stooping over.   

“Relax there, young one,” (Louis'd watched Star Wars the night before in hopes of falling asleep and today it resulted in him channelling Darth Vader and terming every person ‘young one’), “and hasn’t it gotten all wet? It’s pouring!”

“Sheeted in a plastic folder-thingy,” Harry said between heavy breaths. Beneath the hood of his jacket was a roseate face, chaotic curls embroidered to his forehead and temples. “But I’m kinda hungry?”

Herman’s Pølser stood some meters away, a desolate, egg-white hot dog stand in front of the deluged quay. They sought shelter beneath its awnings, quivering with the gusts from north. “Takk, Herman, dine pølser er nu altid de bedste.” Louis thanked after passing over some kroners, lips parted over a mouthful of ketchup- and mustard laced sausage.

“Thank you.” Harry nodded, no less polite, and never had the taste and texture of a hot dog satisfied him as much. The meat yielded pleasantly for each chew, warm down his throat and thawing to his belly. Appropriately, Rolling Stone’s Satisfaction played from the vendor’s red radio. "Have you seen Heartbeat? It's a British show. You look right out of an episode with this song here."

"Why?"

“Dunno, just do. Every song goes with you.” Harry said without offering a second thought.

They stood in silence like that for a while, savouring each wonderful bite and watching the raindrops whip the strait into a fizzy sheet.

“Where did the others disappear to last evening? After Bellevue?” Harry asked. A drop of ketchup spilled to his lapel.

“I only know that August had plans with Cecilie, a girl from the party. They’re secretly in love, we think.”

“Huh.”

“What?”

“I almost thought ... that ... you know ... that August...”

“He’s bi. If that’s what you were thinking of.” Louis smiled, cheeks bouldering with bun.

“Yeah, it was.”

“But he’s quite in love with Cecilie these days. It’s up and down really. She has a hold of his heart of something, you know? Like when someone keeps popping into your life, and you love them again and again though it doesn’t make much sense because when they’re not around, you don’t have feelings for them.”

“Yeah.”

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You've experienced it?”

“No, I just meant that I get it. I know people who have it like that.”

“Yeah ...”

“And you?” Harry hiccupped. He hoped Louis hadn’t seen it – it came off like a spasm. “Have you ever been in love like that?”

“No, not like that.”

A flock of robins cut through the sky, set on for warmer climates.

“Chirp, chirp.” Louis commented mindlessly.

“Chirp, chirp go the birds!” Harry mocked, jutting his index to Louis’ arm.

“They _do_!” he cackled, twitching but not really detracting from the minor bushwhack. “Harry, Harry, Harry,” he said, grabbing both of Harry’s wrists. “We need to go somewhere warm.”

 “Warm? We’re in Denmark! No where’s warm!”

Louis laughed. It was a throaty one, one where Harry's theatrical blinking effect had served its purpose, and Harry wanted to continue the wild blinking, the intense stalemate with Louis’ eyes, but suddenly couldn’t blink at all. Not one bit.

“Kaffeslabaraset is warm. And right around the corner.”

Now Harry guffawed. “Kaffeslabelasy? Seriously, Danish is like ... what _is_ it?”

“Don’t bully. Kaffeslabaraset is cosy and has a fireplace!”

“I won’t bully.”

“Why are you smiling?”  Louis quirked at Harry’s teetering lips. “Isn’t bully the right word?”

“I guess you can use that word. But ‘don’t mock me’ would be better.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t worry, you’ve got your English expert extraordinaire right by your side.”

“Oh, phew,” he snapped his head backwards, rain spilling all over his face, “I was so worried about my perfectly fine English.”

“Perfectly fine ...”

“OK, shut up now.” He claimed yet a firm grip round Harry’s wrist, “It feels like my socks have wet themselves and it’s fucking annoying. We need to get inside somewhere.”

Slightly dazzled at the spontaneous use of swear word, Harry draggled after in cursory spurt. Around the corner of the harbour was a bulbous, bricked lane Harry hadn’t ventured through before, and at the end opened an even narrower mixture of cemented shops and cafés. All teemed with people.

Between a cobbler and a charcuterie specialty shop, Louis shepherded him indoors at last, to a café squeezed in the middle.

 

Floor-to-ceiling windows stood opposite the wide seating area, offering direct view of the harbourside - which Harry didn’t really get. Unless they’d sauntered so deep in the tangle of streets that they were, obviously, abut the harbour.

To the wood beamed walls hung wonky lifebuoys and educational science charts of conch shells. Wild ferns tucked into chipped, old milk jugs on the battered, wooden tables, where solitary men sat in generous distances of each other and sipped coffee or tea while skimming through the flourish of European newspapers. Harry noticed Yngar at once, smoking his abiding pipe and passing a nod their way.

Finding a seat as Louis ordered for them, Harry observed how all the retired sailors and youngsters alike greeted Louis with kisses on the cheek, massive hugs, firm pats on the back, and ... a slap on the bum. At first, Harry irked, as if watching a prey amongst predators, but Louis was leaning strangely into it, jesting right back, and also touching.

Even the barista kept a steady stare at him, blending up their hot cocoas and chaffing him for not wearing a crown. Louis ignored the others at that, craning over the counter with his elbows to devote his attention to the 20-something boy. He was admonishing him, faking to, while all it mounted to were them two passing grins back and forth, cheeks growing increasingly vibrant and maroon.

 

"You know everyone, it seems like.” Harry said as he came over at last. “Every single sailor in Copenhagen."

Louis ducked his head shyly. It was, oddly, one of the sweetest recognitions he'd been given. "I just like to hang out here, so ... It happens naturally."

The cocoa swivelled bitter scents up their nostrils.

"Maybe you will become a sailor one day?"

"I'm sort of doomed to be king." He breathed in defeat, index ensnared through the mug handle.

"Is that so bad?"

"Yes!" He suddenly snapped his elbow out in flourish, nose to table. "I don't want responsibility like that, ever. And I don't want to marry Eleanor. No one wants to marry Eleanor."

"I'll take her so you can go and be free."

Louis inched up, cocking an eyebrow at him. "That is the most absurd thing I've ever heard in my entire life. And I've lived for quite a while! Fifteen and-"

"Oh, blah, blah. You'll always be younger than me."

"Irrelevant. I'm still quite adult-ish. But anyway, if you take El for me then I'll take Hermione."

"I'd gauge that a bit more absurd than being with Eleanor."

"Why? She's single, ain't she? Emma or whatever her real name is. She'd be totally suited to be a queen."

"You know, tonight Venus eclipses Jupiter. I think we can see it from the dock." Harry'd opened up the leaflet once more, close to the middle. "And I found the Swan thing."

Louis craned over. "Isn't that the moon?"

"Well, I've merely opened it. Hold on. _Young one_."

Louis leaned back, giggling with palms clutched around the mug. He wasn't sure if he truly understood Harry always, though he was definitely his best friend now, that much he knew.

They liked the same things and introduced each other to new, amazing bands, as per last night through text. The Killers and The Maccabees and Credence Clearwater Revival. Louis' favourite new song was When You Were Young by The Killers. It often played in the back of his mind when with Harry. " _He doesn't look a thing like Jesus ..._ " just fit so well. Harry with tousled, dark hair and Bambie eyes. Green with speckles of grey. (Or grey with speckles of green?). " _... But he talks like a gentleman ..._ "  Louis giggled once more. Those frightened kitty eyes were locking with his own right now, actually.

Louis darted his gaze over to a snickering Yngar, who rose his mug. "Good cocoa?"

"Yeah!"

"Very good!" They chirped at once. Yes, Louis' mug had stood untouched. He didn't want to scorch his tongue, was the reason.

He brought it gingerly to his lips. _Oh. Tepid._

"Ready for next mission, H?" Yngar inched his stool out.

"Yep. Born ready!" Harry winked.

Louis regretted his mouthful. It was unpleasantly replete, eliciting a cough.

"Big missions for both of ya, ain't it? One, a king, another, a captain."

"I'd rather be a captain ... Harry's super lucky."

"Why don't you join, Louis? I'm sure you'd be allowed out for a month or two?"

"I need to finish school and stuff." His voice had grown decidedly sulky. 

"A book alone makes no one clever." Yngar suggested.

"That's true." Harry was quick to support, "Just look at me and you Louis, how much cleverer I am!"

"I completely forgot about that, Mr. The Moon Is A Swan."

"OK, that was just a completely random page." He flicked through the pages fervently and urged the leaflet closer to himself, turning it upside down and frowning. "Here it is. The Swan."

Louis hovered.

 

**xiv. The Well of Souls.**

He read.

 _Ancient Egyptian cosmology talks about a bird known as the Great Cackler, a cosmic goose, who brings the universe into manifestation by letting out a divine honk or call. It lays the sun-egg from which the creator god emerges, his name altering depending on which cult centre the myth is attached._  
  
_On the famous round zodiacof Denderah, created as late as c. 50 BC, there appears a cosmic goose, and careful analysis of its position in the night sky shows that it formed part of a constellation composed of the stars of Cygnus and the bright star Altair in Aquila, the celestial eagle, an area of the Milky Way dominated by the dark nebulous region known as the Great Rift._

 

"So many weird things in the world." The café'd gone quiet. Harry's voice was merely a guttural whisper through the silent intermissions of the crackling logs.

"And outside it, too ..." Louis shoved his feet further in beneath the table.

The dripping of rain on rooftops echoed through the chimney. Louis saw water pooling in the dip of a lonely table outside, and struck with remembrance of his spongy Converses. "I should change. I'm wet all way through."

"Oh. What are you doing later?"

"House party. Peer's flat in Nørrebro. Would you come? I can ask him. I'm sure it's fine."

"Sure, I'm up for it." Harry downed his dregs.

They boogied out the venue, wishing Yngar a great day onwards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo ... Chapter named after Ella Henderson’s Ghost, then.
> 
> //I keep going to the river to pray  
> 'Cause I need something that can wash out the pain  
> And at most I'm sleeping all these demons away  
> But your ghost, the ghost of you  
> It keeps me awake//
> 
> The Swan info. http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_cygnus02.htm


	8. mighty frightening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Today has been day and night. Suddenly I was in the middle of the day, and suddenly I was in the middle of the night. I might be drunk. And I met Louis again today, can't remember if I've told you about him. He is a prince but not stuck up. I saw him smile at a random cat, so. And he sits on kitchen benches and laughs a lot and says a lot of weird things I don't know are funny or not. Sometimes I think he looks like other people I’ve met but other times he doesn’t at all. H

**3 d June, 2006**

The bony-fingered hand of a girl (Kristian’s girlfriend) wouldn't release the grip on Harry's thigh. During someone’s comment of a particularly rowdy nature, her elbow kneaded into the tendons of his leg, and in the following intermission where he attempted a joke on his own (“What kind of bagel can fly? A plain bagel,”), she left a wet giggle up the side of his jaw.

“Just gotta use the loo.” He rose, honing in on a blue door down the hall.

He’d arrived 43 minutes ago, he found, upturning his wristwatch mid-pee. 8:03 PM and every single guest sozzled. There'd been a spin the bottle and two kisses from two blurry faces with a congratulatory pat on the back by Peer as well as the never-ending vodka pour coming from the Absolute clutched in some person's hand.

The flat stood on the eight floor of a red-bricked building. It was central, overviewing Christiansborg Castle and _Strøget_ \- the shopping area nested in the heart of the city.

Harry zipped up and gave his hands a wash with what he thought was soap but turned out to be moisturizer, and braved his figure out the petite slate-tiled bathroom. 

 

 

Rosy light came shimmering out the crack of a half-open door at the end of the hall. Toddling closer, Harry's ears could pick up cackles and loud clinks of glass. He decided to enter.

 

His gaze adjusted to the lack of light and mapped out the contours of a wide bed carrying the weight of three young boys. A few others were relaxing by the window sill, and another boy tinkered with a CD player on the maroon carpet floor.

“Harry! Tell them there is no monster such as Loch Ness!”

“What?” He was urged into the middle of the bed. The girl offered him a glance while puffing little circles of smoke out her mouth.

“The monster! It’s not real, right?”

“I-I’m not Scottish, Kristian …”

Base off Pitbull songs shook through the bed legs as other theories got propounded, undisturbed by Harry’s presence. He sniffed the saccharine scent of the room. Fanta and Absolute. Then, a prodding toe from the direction of the window shoved against at his bicep.

"Oh! Hey!" Harry said, having an inconvenient swallow at the latter word.

Louis uncorked one of the three bottles next to him and handed one over. "Applesby?"

"Sure! Thanks."

“Har nogen af jer et kondom?” August's shadowed posture set a stoppage to the hallway light raying in the room. The mojito in his hand were billowing riskily against the rim and the girl in his embrace. Or woman? The slopes of her hips set the shape of a snakeskin-looking dress, and ample locks of blonde hair cast down her chest like giggly, euphoric ... ski slopes?... soaking up only to reflect scant, leftover sources of light. (Harry obviously wasn't sailor enough to weather the effects of alcohol). He propped himself up by the help of two plus size pillows, neck veered at Louis for sensemaking. From where he saw him sitting cross-legged on the sill, a sky littered with winter stars reigned above his head.

There wasn't much more sense than that.

“So you made it.” Louis traced Harry’s view.

Arcturus.

“Of course.”

Harry saw his knees rearrange, face falling obscured by a grey shadow shifting indigo in the starlight. “That’s not of course.”

“Of course it’s of course.”

“OK.” Louis rolled his eyes. They giggled underbreath.

 

Hertfordshire brewed cider became the essential ingredient Harry's loosening up; he was somehow the cause of the hallway’s white, fluffy carpet having gone askew, August's rosé to diminish (Peer had offered doggedly, mind you) and the greenery of the sills to be granted their first human kiss.   

“Why kiss something that doesn’t even enjoy it.” A guy’d stressed in between a white rose and a poinsettia, sans question mark.

“You can’t tell if they enjoy it or not,” another said. “Less they die right after, I guess.”

“They’ll only grow.” Harry smacked a last peck.

 

The living room was toasty. The corners were clad in red bricks similar to the ones outside, with an electric fireplace flaring haphazard embers into the darkness and techno beats. Several flocked to the balcony, indulging in Columbian cigars and dirty martinis.

 

As flattop-trimmed and dainty the boys seemed, most of Louis’ friends were people Harry could connect easily with.

Admittedly, Alan, a 21 year old from Skagen, offered the best regalement of all, jokes dry and moot-pointed and fitting Harry's taste to a T. Alan wore an emerald velour suit, spoke excellent English, something Danes seemed to deem of high importance, and was on holidays from Eton College. (Yeah.)

He was soon overtaken, though, as his stories seemed to trigger Louis to make up … no, to realistically describe fables … _stories_ , of his own. Harry observed Louis' animate potboiler quietly, learning of the fate-twisting day he'd been bitten by a turtle in Spain and now had a scar the size of a pen on the underside of his wrist. “I’d show you guys my scar but it’s a draft here on the kitchen island,” he shrugged from his preferred seating area. “Chilly.”

_Right._

A girl next to Louis had been trying to get the corkscrew out of his hands for the last few minutes. Word by word, it was like her voice faded away and Louis’ volume only increased. Harry’d never seen him this drunk before, indeed; drunk at all. Bouncy and jittery on the marble. Though he must’ve been under influence that night The Scripts played, pupils dilated at the skyline like they'd never seen a moon before.    

“Let me get that for you." The girl plopped next to Harry to yank open a red wine at the centre of the table. Harry most certainly hadn’t brought red wine (No ... Right?) but no one offered it an ounce of attention so he didn’t feel too bad granting himself a hearty sip. "Are you staying with Peer at the moment?” She inquired.

“Oi, oi!”

Louis, along with another person plummeted to his lap, each releasing a cascade of beers on the only white shirt he owned. “Excuse me,” the girl said testily, “we’re in the middle of a conversation.”

“You’re single, Harry’s single. Conversation completed.”

“Oh my god.” She rolled her eyes. “I was wondering where he was s _taying_ since he talks English and clearly isn’t from Denmark.”

“Man kan da ige bare spørre om det! Don’t listen to her, Harry!” he ruffled up Harry’s sleeve to whisper into his ear. “She’ll never leave you alone!”

Harry reddened. It was a warm blush due to the sudden burst of heat in the room. Nine lit honeybee candles. Soggy beer on his shirt with the consistency of liquefied wax. He wasn’t sure how to respond to any of it, Louis and the girl jabbering in ever incomprehensible Danish, finding himself inch thoughtlessly closer to Louis’ thigh to get what Niels mouthed to him from the fake fire.  

“Ugh,” Drunk Louis remarked as Harry rose, spotting Niels himself. “Cigarettes are gross.”   

"Beats the beer all over my crotch." Harry stalled and angled towards him, indexes aimed at the ever sprouting blotch on his jeans.

"Alright." Niels’ flung Harry away in sudden advance. "Away from Princey boy, chop, chop."

"Kaeften, Niels!" cast after them as they took on the cramped balcony jutting out the kitchen.

 

Niels' two cigarettes twirled in his fingers, Copenhagen's multicoloured centre as backdrop. Harry noted the Citadel with a view all the way to the Sound.

A group had camped at the rooftop to their left. It reigned above a larger balcony, and so presumably larger flat. Niels rested his elbows to the wrought railing, striking up conversation across the flats. Some of Peer's people had migrated over.

Harry allowed a moment to close his eyes and soak up the atmosphere by help of his nostrils. Charcoal and Lucky Strike.

Winter in June.

 

Half the ensemble was at the neighbours', they found as they headed back indoors, and went over there themselves.

Its square meters and wide walls were arrogated scabrous upholstery and posters of Cannes-shot movies; red lipstick and 50's getup. A titanic cactus with red flowers placed inconveniently on the floor by an L-shaped sofa. Atmospheric, though without fireplace, and a kitchen claiming half the area. August, three girls and Louis, who also here preferred to sit criss-crossed on the kitchen island, looked lost in a newfound debate.

Basil and coriander lined the Corian worktop with 14 year old whiskey in containers of complex drawings; swirls of different animals with a swan's wingspan in the centre. Bold letters unravelling the historic saga on the brand's origin. And a Nikka From The Barrel, Harry recognized. He'd had a few in Japan, their provenience. They looked like the squared glass bottles of cough medicine he took when he was nine. Horrendous pertussis.

The place was a melting pot of people in their late teens to twenties, somewhat like at Peer’s.  

Harry took to the fire escape route out the balcony, scouring to hog himself a spot on the roof.

Up there, light glided away like a grand drape of a theatre. Out came all sorts of star constellations and props and dialogues; each part interlinked but telescopic in entirety. Kind of.

It soundtracked with Eiffel 65's Blue indoors.

Peer and Niels’d gotten up there already, as well as Jørgen. “Jorge!” Harry said, fumbling over a pair of knees to hug him.

“Harry! Good to see you, man. Louis brought you?” A girl was in his arms, and she (rudely, Harry thought) nuzzled her nose to Jørgen’s lips and began making out with him.

"I think ..." Louis hiccupped up the staircase, oblivious to it all and startled by Harry's advance for his Boston Ale.

"That you've had too much to drink?" It was icy in his grip.

"Dear British friend." Louis slumbered against him for positioning, "There is never ..." and blared a frog-like squeak, "thing as enough alcohol."

"Sure it is. And this is a _sailor_ telling you this."

"It is ... My British best friend sailor."

"Your British best friend sailor," Harry flung his arms out in a clownish _tada_. "My Danish prince."

Louis' eyes centred on his. Darting wildly and with light hesitance, Harry sensed as though they spoke. _Who are you, really? Who are we when together? And hi, by the way. Did we say hi tonight? HelloHelloHello._

In retrospect, he knew this wasn't what was occupying Louis' mind, brows now furrowed with the look of sheer alarm.

"I gotta puke."

His body sprung like a half-sketched cartoon down the staircase. Harry could hear the smack of a bathroom door linger a hollowing bang out to the balcony and swore it echoed out into the universe (or universes).

 

*

 

Jørgen, Niels and Peer felt like classmate stand-ins as they sprung down the spiralled staircase of the building to head out. The hallway was yellow and smelled of the last school Harry'd attended at 14. The four roamed through Copenhagen centre with the rest, including a belated Louis, in tow. Jørgen tripped on a manhole halfway to wherever they were headed, eliciting a giggle out of Harry. Then, straight before them, flashed six gaudy-looking letters. _T I V O L I_ .  

A large Ferris wheel puttered in the distance, starry grey in the horizon.

Jørgen wasn't allowed entrance into the night-open amusement park due to floundering onto the guard as well, and Harry felt obligated to console his denial of access with pink cotton candy. A pizza place and an Irish bar shone their lights on them from where they veered towards the nearest street. A middle-aged man with beard to his tummy and brows the size of a Christmas bough played his keyboard by their side.    

Niels, Peer, August and Louis stood some meters further out where Louis clamoured on to a streetlight post.  

A fog was settling over the streets. Insects roamed weightlessly around, and dodged any car- and bus collisions by the bubble of air that formed in the encounters – invisible shields of density.

“I don’t want to go home for anything other than a visit. I don’t want to go anywhere for anything other than a visit, ever!” Louis said, casting his body into the swirl he'd grown to love. It felt dangerous to spin all on his own but thanks to years of hour-long ballet classes, he, in practiced manner, made a solid focal point of the Nordea Bank across the intersection and kept his nausea at bay.

“Aye, aye!” said August, but Louis found him in the way, somehow. _Move, move, move!_

He grabbed for Harry's arm and swivelled them around in five circles, then latched hands in criss-cross and all their eyes could aim at were the other's until the scenery behind them carouselled into swipes of red and blue and blinking gold; until Harry glowed of happy heat, ruddy-faced and lazy-boned, snatching up scents off the trees and recognizing spring. Not winter.

Louis picked it up too.

How eternal and unconquerable  _somethings_ bore in the swivels. He knew he'd lose it once they stopped, secretly praying it'd last forever and that he could shuck it in a pouch and hogtie the drawstring so it'd never go away. It was the truest thing he'd felt all night. All summer. He gauged the shine off Harry's grin.

His back dodged the edge of the keyboard, a disconnected thought lurking in the hinterlands of his mind. 

Decelerating, people concentred into view. Harry found as though everyone had a smile on their face, tan in the midnight air and sucking swirly shaped lollipops the size of squash.

Louis cast him a quick-once over glance. _  
_

"So any girls back in England, Harry?" Jørgen said. Harry turned and found three of him. "… Any girls you like?”

“Uhm. There is a girl from home that I like … Felicity. I thought I’d ask her to maybe kiss next time I see her.” Harry shrugged, but with brows raised in a way that the boys could only read as _urgent advice needed_.

“You can’t just ask that!” Louis said. “Don’t fall for girls, Harry, that’s what they  _do_! Trust me, I know what I’m talking about.  _I_ have a girlfriend! First they strip you off all your freedom and then you wish you were alone!”

Once more, Louis' whines shrilled too loud for his visions of Izzy to uphold and Harry giggled. “You have no freedom left?” 

“None what so ever. You’re better off with someone else!”                  

“Why would I be freer with someone else?”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

“What?”

"Well, you wouldn't be free with Camilla, that's for sure, the girl hitting on you at Peer's. First they ask you innocent questions like where you live, your name, your number, and before you know it they got you in their claws.”

"Fact, though. Camilla's been on everyone." Jørgen said.

 

The night came to an abrupt end at that. Peer banged his shin against a statue (accidental) and two girls from the party assisted in getting him back home. 

"Max is by the Citadel," Louis said, waving a half-hearted farewell. They all said goodbye to him, but he didn't return it to anyone in particular, just ambled off north.

"Joining us?" Peer beckoned for Harry.

"Nah, early morning."

"Alright. We'll keep in touch! Coffee tomorrow or something?"

"Sure, yeah."

 

The cargo bobbed nicely and even. His form was ace. His vision clear. The road home well lit.

There was a blue moon but Harry pretended not to see. Enough with colours, his drunken mind meddled. Enough with the twinkles and enough with fairy lights.

In the cabin, he picked out his journal from the sock drawer and gazed out the porthole as his fingers pressed pen against paper. An eternal type of darkness emanated out the sea. The forever kind he'd grown to prefer.

_What's luck?_

It was crooked, stretching through two lines - the rest neat and orderly.

_Today has been day and night. Suddenly I was in the middle of the day, and suddenly I was in the middle of the night. I might be drunk. And I met Louis again today, can't remember if I've told you about him. He is a prince but not stuck up. I saw him smile at a random cat, so. And he sits on kitchen benches and laughs a lot and says a lot of weird things I don't know are funny or not. Sometimes I think he looks like other people I’ve met but other times he doesn’t at all. H_

_(PS it is probably more than luck)_

 

* 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title inspired by No Doubt's Don't Speak live version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1usDPlrcv-0
> 
> //Our memories  
> Well, they can be inviting  
> But some are altogether  
> Mighty frightening  
> As we die, both you and I  
> With my head in my hands  
> I sit and cry//


	9. you're right, you're right

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> there is a scene I picture with the sea. -

**Café Victor, Ny Østergade 8, 1101 Copenhagen, September 2nd, 2016  
**

 

“Hi, Harry. Good to see you again.” Oscar gave his hand a firm shake. He was as handsome looking as ever, jet-black hair impeccably tousled and eyes a radiant blue.

“Good to see you.”

 

It was swanky. Fiord shrimps and herring filet were being prepped in the kitchen. Groupings of oval, chestnut tables held espressos abound. The buses and cars puttering by the floor-to-ceiling windows stirred well into the foyer.

Harry, Haakon and Jonas grabbed their plain blacks, aiming for the outside tables as Oscar called, "Drenger!" from the threshold for a couple of guys on the curb.

The two stepped with logy gaits onto the red, dewy carpet runners of Café Victor.

Harry heard mentions of England being exchanged before offered the grip of a dainty hand. "Felix."  _  
_

“Fredrik,” said the other, emerging from the back. His grip was harder. Hair darker. “We’ll just go in and order.”

 

Only one other group was sat outside; by the windows. Haakon lit Harry and Jonas' cigars, cheeks already pink off the chill. The air'd been growing cold the past few days, smelling barren. The person furthest in were stroking his hands together violently, beanie tucked over his ears. Red woollen mittens lay next to a steaming macchiato. 

 

“Good lads,” Oscar remarked, sitting down with them and wiping foam off his lips. “Fredrik and Felix. They lived in Australia for a year, Harry, maybe you’ve even crossed paths before?”  

 

The cold boy by the window was laughing at something a girl with dark hair and masculine jaw were explaining animatedly. Then, in profile, Harry saw the boy wink at the guy next to him before passionlessly adjusting his feet in the girl’s lap and staring inside the venue.

 

“Probably.” Harry took a careful sip, not arsed to debate the blatant likeliness of such an assumption.

In the beat of a second hand, the cold boy turned.

Harry squinted. His beverage was too hot.

Now a woman had come to the window-group, kissing each of their cheeks twice. Alternating her Louis Vuitton bag from left to right wrist while simultaneously tossing back her shiny dark brown mane, she asked for a flat white to a waiter who'd popped out to swipe the grounds - inhaling the icy air in hope of a customer interlude.

Her gaze landed directly at Harry, then.

Years at sea elicited that effect, he’d learned. Like the mystique of the sea had rubbed off on him too.

 

“Céline!" Oscar called.

Shifting her Louis Vuitton bag to a permanent position in the nook of her elbow,  _Céline_ approached.

Harry’s mind set on the white linen covering the table. The sounds of an espresso being made as the door sprung up. A comment protruding from his subconscious, once said to him beneath a waterfall in Argentina; _A lifetime on earth is less than a nanosecond if you're far out in space._ Now Harry figured that if the very depths of the universe didn't take a person's life into account one iota, he needn't invest too much in it either.

"Oscar, søde mann, vor mår det?"

"Godt, godt!"

 

Maybe it was the kind of café where a certain bunch of people always went together, and that no matter time of day, you’d find a familiar face. Once more Harry heard the mention of England, with Celine beckoning for him and chirping in put-on accent, "Oh, England! How adorable. Me and Oscar go to Cambridge annually, don't we Oscar." 

"Yes, our second cousin's uncle holds shares in the unive-"

"Oh! Flat white's finished!" She displayed a row of crooked, glossy teeth. "Tada, boys!"

“Party tonight by the way,” Oscar said. "Are you guys coming?"

"Den vid Østreport?"

"Ja. Everyone's invited, by the way!" he turned to include the guys, who all nodded in unison.

"Well, then. I'll make it my priority." Her eyes sparked at Harry's. "And I'll ask the rest, too. I'm sure we'll be there. Bye, gentlemen."

_God._

Harry was quick to involve himself in the following chit-chatter between Jonas, Haakon and Oscar. Out of boredom and spite for his coffee, his eyes wandered thoughtlessly back at the other table. The boy's face was once more facing the windows. In profile, his facial expressions were fluid-like; straight linen on a mattress someone was tossing and turning in.

Older.

 

With mugs empty, Harry, Oscar, Jonas and Haakon joined the streets for bitter winds. Tightening the scarf around his neck, Harry merely nodded at Haakon’s suggestion of texting him time and address of the event.

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from Imany - Don't Be So Shy 
> 
> //Take off your clothes  
> Blow out the fire  
> Don't be so shy  
> You're right  
> You're right//


	10. let me love you old school

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> \- motioning alongside some slow version of Armin van Buuren’s Another You.

A dab of shower soap skipped Harry's left arm. He applied another dash as his phone lit up from the sink's edge.

Turning, parts of his hair stuck to his nape. Was it getting too lengthy, perhaps. The radio host cut off Cake By The Ocean with Work From Home.

_Nah._

 

 

_the left. LEFT_

Haakon had a way of coming across as downright rude by text. Harry'd learned not to linger on it.

He chose the rightward path. All cobbles and burgeoning pansies hanging from the shops.

_LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEFT_

Oh. He twirled, dodging a collective bubble of perfume off five chatty girls. 

 

Haakon leaned against a wooden building that peeked out of place among Copenhagen's dominant brick walls. "Hello, H!" he greeted, holding out a Martini Dry for him. They sat to share tables beneath the buzzing heaters with Oscar, Jonas, Lars - who'd 'found himself' during a recent road trip to Göteborg and was rid of all heartache - Céline (sporting a smaller Louis Vuitton purse), others from the window-group people, Felix and Fredrik.

"Harry, my man, how are you?"

Despite the geniality, Oscar'd always come across as slightly reserved to Harry. The way he offered a hug but barely motioned his arms was both contradictive and annoying. He was hot, and as a rule, Harry never frowned upon hugs from hot men.

"Great, thanks."

"Were you lost?" Céline beckoned to clink her glass with his across the table. 

"Nah, just ... Just looking around."

"There's a live band by the canal," Oscar said. "We could head there after our drinks?"

"Who's playing?" Haakon asked.

"No idea. It's a cover band. They've played here and there in Europe all summer, but this is their last night, I think."

"Mm." Haakon sipped, gazing appeased at bypassing people. "Like a wandering circus."

"Oh, do you remember the circus we went to when we were kids?" Another woman asked Oscar.

"Yeah. Mostly just the cotton candy, though."

"Me too. And the Ferris wheels."

Tidbits of foreign conversation reached Harry's ears as he tuned in on them. Norwegian, German, American. This vague, light laughter ringing from further down the streets. By the pansies.

Several stole glances at their choice of bar; wistful adults with trails of three or four children nagging for ice cream and soda. Harry clocked each person. He remembered circuses as well. Red and white stripes. Drunk Ducat Grabbers tripping on chords.

 

Céline and Felix knew several of the people by the canal, and soon they were enveloped in yet a group of fresh linen-smelling Danes who Harry continuously had to ask talk English to him.

He drank happily. Whiskey sours and Corona, a coastal Norwegian vodka - Asgaards-something? ... It all began to appear wobbly to him; the docks, people's faces, the bar stands. The ground.  

Even the sun, who wiggled its way down above the water ... submerging into it.  _If_ this were to be true, would all the world's ocean be able to soak up the sun and kill it? Or would the water be like drizzle on a fiery, charcoal barbie?

The skies went all blue now, cobalt, with specks of purple. Swans fled the area, eastwards for warmth. It was chilly, indeed. Harry zipped up his 90's bomber jacket. Its inside fabric was holed up, doing haphazard attempts at retaining warmth. 

Then someone whistled his way from the taxi stand. _Oh._ Haakon. "Get in here!" he called, and so Harry did.

Shutting his eyes, he let the taxi carry them to wherever the others deemed right. Squinting, Harry saw the moon hover above a spire. In the vanity shield was the setting sun, near to swallowed. _The moon and the sun at once._ His brows bunched. _The two together? Meeting? How?_

 

Then, the taxi yanked to a halt before a rhododendron clad driveway. Emerald green shrubs that were cut into squares framed a white cemented villa.

“Hm, er det skotske?”

He entered the hallway. Heard the presumptuous smacks of a tasting session.

"Schweizisk, tror jeg?"

A wide-decked terrace showed as a natural extension out two open double-doors. It reigned out to the backyard where groupings of tall and short buildings leered close. Washing hung sunken on the lines of other people's backyards; no breeze for miles around. Chimneys stood cold and unused - for now. Three stars had accompanied the moon, Harry saw. The sun was gone.

Women in white dresses did cartwheels on trimmed grass. Men cheered them on from one of the windows opposite, over the hedge. Lanterns peeked up off the grounds like iridescent coltsfoot. There must've been at least 70 people.

In a room by the kitchen were pool tables and a giant TV. Harry passed by it all, couldn't find any of those he'd arrived with. People filtered through the doorways, down and up one of three staircases. He felt an immediate need for air.

In what felt like a second, he leaned against one of the perfectly cut shrubs. In closer view, he saw it carried hundreds of tiny, pink buds.

Piano - of all things - played from across the street. From yet a brick walled, old building.

Lighting a cigarette, he strolled down the sidewalk. Six guys passed him, clinking their beers and inhaling strong tobacco. Very strong, actually. Harry u-turned and asked for a drag. "Here," said a boy. "You can take a whole one if you like."

"Thanks."

"No worries," he sing-sang, bumping shoulders with him.

A girl sighed. “Too much nicotine for little Jens."

"ADD more like it, he hasn't shut up all day."

"Ey!" Jens admonished, mouth agape but eyes dazed, "Never enough nicotine for little Jens."

"Right ..." 

Harry fumbled with the fag. Which way was which? Having followed them, he was back by the shrubs, taking heed of his steps on the stone pathway leading to the entrance. 

"Like this." Someone said, angling it correctly in the left corner of his mouth.

"Thought you only did coke now, L?"

"Fuck off."

 

The nicotine shot straight to Harry's forehead, passing an electric current down to his clavicles.

 

More people had arrived. If not for the harsh fag, it would probably reach the top ten best parties of his life. The mood was effortless, the alcohol flowing, the air warm. 

All eyes aglow.

Harry felt sick.

 

Every wall had a beat; that of a massive surround system pounding Lady Gaga and Rihanna and Dr Dre and whatnot through the nightfall, and the melody of constant, thick tobacco, blowing in his neck and through the sleeves of his shirt and everywhere.

It was at the final step down the terrace that he was yanked out by Haakon. "Party sucks, we're going to an underground club."

"Wha-"

"Cab's here."

 

It wasn't underground at all. Or - it felt underground, but was a whiskey bar rented for an afterparty for a playwright newcomer, a Norwegian woman, who'd just had her play presented in the royal theatre. People wore ball gown dresses with masquerade masks before their eyes; men dapper and minimalistic in crisp, tailored suits. A feeling of discomfort slid by Harry. Was this going to be yet another party in Copenhagen where he was underdressed? And since when did he even care if he was underdressed? Their masks had ostrich feathers dipped in pink glitter on them for God's sake.

"Oscar promised club." Haakon said crestfallen, fetching a glass of prosecco from a silver tray. Harry ordered a whiskey on the rocks.

A fireplace growled in the far corner. Cigarette trays where placed by every armrest of the mahogany leather sofas, with little to none supervision of how many cigars got lit in the venue. All windows were ajar.

Artsy poster hung on the walls. One recent-looking theatre advertisement. Harry stared lost at the words:

_Den norske forsvar Staff Band giver koncert i Stær kasserer, Kgs. Nytorv, torsdag, den 31. marts måned. Gæstesolister er mezzosopran Randi Stene og baryton Yngve Søberg. Programmet omfatter musik af Gustav Mahler._

"Learning the final adjustments of Danish?" Oscar said, smiling at his side.

Handsomely.

Very handsome.

Would they ever properly hug, though, that was the question. Harry sipped his whiskey. "Yeah, very close to having it all covered now." It was funny, he knew. Oscar laughed. The room moved. Curtains flared across the panes and darkness grew. A gramophone player by the fireplace sent Doris Day's voice to every corner of the room.

_"Dream a little dream of me ..."_

"Now, now, now!" A voice called in the lone mike. Only then did Harry note the dusted-down music gear on an Indian carpet. "In honour of Cornelia," (Harry sighed at the way it was pronounced and ordered another whiskey, gaining balance by the bar rack), "we want to offer the symbolical gift of a live, special, amazing, incredible, mind-blowing, unforgettable version of Ocean by John Butler."

The boy cleared his throat. Harry felt his own clog up.

"I'll be on the guitar, Ole will sing, and our indispensable Scotsmen will ... do whatever else."

Laughter.

Quiet.

The boy stared nervously at the barman for a moment, letting his fingers familiarize with the strings. Prepping his hold.

Harry's elbow slid, and by a lucky chance he caught the grip of a beer hose.

A smile came and left the boy's lips. His eyebrows softened, as if struck by a sudden dab of gravity. All of his features ... melting into one. Hair obscured his forehead so Harry couldn't see much else. A Palace hat on his head. Jeans so regular and sandblasted Harry couldn't count the number of times he'd seen it on people throughout his lifetime, his travels. A white band t-shirt. He'd worn it all night. Of course. Right. All night. Been on him all night.

Before Ole could utter a single letter, Harry bolted.

Through Kongens Nytorv, down the allée, through a couple of parks.

 _Svanemøllebugten_ , he panicked, trying to recall where it was. A whiff of lemon tree came to him. The leafy touch of an Elephant Ear plant. Gravel scraping up his jaw. _Fuck._ He sniffed. It was salty. He squinted up. The moon had descended, and pretty soon it would be swallowed too. A black ocean stood ready to indulge it.  _Swish ... Swush ... Swish ..._

And then he puked.

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title taken from Urban Cone's Old School (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3f8pBH5TzU).
> 
> //I'll give you the world if you want  
> Or we could take the top down by the coastline  
> Kissing every red light
> 
> Let me love you old school  
> I know you will dig it  
> Let me take you downtown  
> Date night, I'll make it  
> Make it all about you  
> Everything that I do  
> Is to love you old school"


	11. without your light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> there is a scene I picture with the sea.  
> -

**June 23d, 2006**

 

Summer had reached its height. June 23d and Midsummer.

Louis loved it. The air, the mosquitos, the salt of his skin. Everything. He hopped off the cemented extension of a shabby hut, slurping a glob of melting ice cream just before it slid down the moist cone. "Lads, lads, lads ..."

"He's trying for his English not to be so posh," Harry informed Niall.

"I was just thinking ..." Louis cleared his throat and turned at the ocean. It was already darkening. "That we sneak with us some vodka from your ship and go some place and drink it?"

"Sure. We've got moonshine."

"Hm, not yet but around midnight, I reckon, Ni."

Niall and Harry choked a giggle.

"Come on then," Louis hurried, proud at eliciting laughter of his experienced and seen-it-all-heard-it-all sailor friends.

 

They texted some of Louis' mates and gathered around the closest of seven bonfires glittering down the rocky shore like spilled, luminescent, giant beads.

"The moon makes me think about how we're on earth." Louis mused, sipping the moonshine - which was just _w_ _ow._

"What do you mean?"

"Like ... That we're here. Now. Like the moon has been placed where it is because of the locomotion of the creation of our galaxy, and now, millions of years later, we can sit here and observe it."

"Your English is great, Lou!" Niall praised, toasting.

"Thank you, sweet Niall. And thank you for the boozom."

"You mean booze." Harry, for the first time that evening, didn't outright laugh at Louis' many drunken uttering's. It irked Louis. He had meant it as a joke. Bosom - booze. Danish mishap.

Niall did though. "I wonder if other people in other galaxies are doing the same thing right very second." He suggested.

"That would be brilliant. Like a parallel universe," said Niels.

"Maybe there's a Harry and Niall and Louis and Niels and Jørgen and August there."

"Maybe they're under a moon as well, talking together and having drinks that leave the tongue a sandpaper." Louis beckoned at their sudden silence. "What?"

"Your British self is quite poetic, Lou." Niall said.

A rasping sound left Louis' throat, sort of like a laugh. Again; Harry kept mum.

 

They wandered home after an hour or so.

Balancing alongside a pod of freshwater, Louis lobbed a flower's head at Harry's face but the air yanked it away. It landed onto the pond, carrying it placidly along. Its yellow petals drained in the dark and become colourless. Louis noted Harry smile in the corner of his eye. Saw it increase and decline.

Niall chased August cross the jutting woodland pass the pond. They were drunk, cackling and shouting offensive (but friendly, Louis guessed) names at each other.

Niall tripped on an exposed root, blonde tufts caught in royal blue skylight. Louis' mates helped heave him back up. He recalled a fairy tale from when he was young that had looked like this. Like June and buds swallowed by the sea. And Harry. It also looked like Harry.

In the fairy tale, the people in a village were being watched by angels up in the sky. Maybe it was the same thing with the planets and moons and stars and satellites. Maybe _they_ were looking at _them._

It felt like there was a dent in everything around them, making everything appear irregular. But how could you know if absolutely everything was irregular? How could you know it was right or wrong? It fused, kind of. Like what heart strings do. Had he ever seen a real life heart? Yeah. It wasn't the most picturesque of shapes but miraculous, still. Biggest mystery, our hearts ... Supposedly more powerful and magnetized than our brain. Beating in every single living thing. His grandmother used to say that even the dead had a heart beat, reverberating for thousands of years from the time they had lived. Did Harry believe that? Did he believe in ghosts?

“Yeah. But I’m not scared of them.”

Oh. Had he said that out loud? He physically distracted himself from the silvery bobbing of Skagerrak. It must have a beat of its own, he assumed. Always so alive. And definitely until forever. “Me neither. Couldn’t physically touch us, could they? Nothing to get your briefs in a mix about.”

“Oh, God.”

“Hm?”

“Knickers in a twist, Louis Prince.” Harry scraped his hands to his face dramatically. In the slots of his fingers, Louis saw him grin.

“Are you entirely sure?”

“Mhm.” Harry scooted over to let his fingers play along Louis’ sides. “100% entirely.”

“OK, OK!” Louis ducked, screeches close to the gangplanks. The waves came brawling that instant.

August, Niels, Jørgen and Niall laughed somewhere ahead, steps random but aim straight.

The ruckus of sea and people left a silence between Harry and Louis, one where all Louis wanted was to check if it would carry them, should he grab Harry's hand and hop into it. If it believed in their soul like they did in its.

The spray cast droplets to Harry's face, grey upon the sun-kissed skin. Louis could spot every single one.

“So this is June in Scandinavia ...”

“Yes. You’ve been missing out.”

“I have.”

“You have.”

“Yep.”

“Yes.”

“Alright. Crossroads,” Harry said, standing centre in a fork in the road.

It was a faster, firmer farewell than the last time.

 

*

 

On his way home, the rain had come eventually, seeping fully into Louis' left sole. He'd felt dopily at one with the ground beneath him, and the volcanic layers beneath that. Something hot beat against his feet – he assumed it as Earth’s inner core because the beating stopped each time his feet were in the air; sprinting the shortcut for his room. The night a vision of invasive clouds and brittle pines. Magpie silhouettes that never moved.

He came to rest his forehead at the bedroom painting while glancing out the window. Bowed lines of a sliver-thin moon looked propped up there like a puppetry; a C drawn with the sharpest glow paint pen. Might be beautiful but it could never be true. Science was true. Drawings were just drawings.

Gosh, how he didn't get the world. Not one ounce of it, as he assumed the Brits would say. He understood friends, though. Friendships and sharing ice cream and moonshine. He understood Harry's accent and Niall's humour. How the ceiling spun as he twisted and turned and touched himself in his king size bed with Egyptian sheets. How it was so very comfortable to be happy and horny and think about nice things, like bums and tummies and sunburnt arms.

In the midst of it, he imagined a sky as frail as tissue paper, carving several thin C's into it with a math compass. Behind it opened a whole new sky. More sparkling. Bluer. Now that he had created it, it felt so true - a true thing - so maybe beauty could be for everyone. Maybe the potential was there.

Soon enough he fell asleep, nauseous and worried of actually puking. That had _never_ happened to him before.

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title inspired by Roelof Kruisinga's version of Armin van Buuren ft. Trevor Guthrie's This Is What it Feels Like (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJCnrtVFLvs)
> 
> //And I don’t even know how I survive  
> I won’t make it to the show without your light  
> No I don’t even know if I’m alive  
> Oh, oh, oh without you now  
> This is what it feels like//


	12. a fool to ask for your heart

“Where’re Harry and Louis?”

“They’re in the garden, I think.”

“No, they’re in the other living room.”

“I saw them on the swing set.”

“Wherever they are, can’t anyone tell them to hurry up?”

It had turned into the biggest hooray; Prince Louis of Denmark inviting an entire crew of British sailors in addition to his large group of acquaintances and friends at his family’s summer villa in Griswold right outside Copenhagen.

Princess Marie, Louis’ sister, was making a toast for everyone’s attendance, and it didn’t look good without the host actually appearing himself.  They were trained for this; open, expressive demeanour with an exact balanced ratio of laughs, emphatic smiles and courtesy.

Harry stumbled in the door, the bright-eyed skinny 15-year old adoptee to one of the old and bearded sailors. How no one reacted to the alarmingly green alcoholic drink he’d been sporting all evening, Marie would never understand. Vandals are what they were. And they sure brewed them young.

“Where’s my brother?” she asked.

“Uhm, I think he’s coming soon,” the boy fluttered. Marie found it so, so annoying. She very well began her toast, thanking everyone for coming, noting that the portrait by the velvet couch was indeed her great-great-great-grand father, yes, and how good it was to have such a cultural variety of “err … professions … here in our home. Louis keeps telling me all about the sea, he’s been fascinated by it since we were young, studying abroad at a private school in Hampshire, and seeing how I’m studying Political Science myself, I can absolutely see how that can draw paralle-”

“ _Harry_!”

Louis stood by the door to the living room, the soft light barely reaching him from where he made a theatrical gesture with his hands. “Do you think the God in Heaven would approve of substances playing with the mind? Having them impure and unfiltered, bewildered … Untrue?” Harry clutched his drink in some intoxication of joy while Louis mused philosophically at the ceiling, clearly waiting for divine intervention to answer. He'd immersed himself in even more advanced English.

“I swear,” said Marie, “there’s an own type of world belonging to you.”

“Did you hear that, Harry? A whole world to ourselves!”

Harry giggled but didn’t know where to look. The spacious living room was humid, his torn knit sweater a bit tight around the neck.

“I’ll be the king,” Louis went on, “and you’ll be the … other king?”

“Or your servant?”

The laughter in the room lowered an unnoticeable bit. Some of the sailors aw-ed.

“Yeah,” Louis cooed. “You can set the whole village on fire every time I’m mad and make the whole population of whatever world we’re in make me pie. No, you! _You_ make pie!”

“OK, I’ll cook for you,” Harry nodded in grave compliance.

“And there’s a forest,” Louis’ gaze swayed, “where I’d be put off my throne if I misbehaved. If I do… I have to be _your_ servant.”

Harry folded his hands. “It's only fair.”

“Ahem.”

The turned to Marie, snapped out of the hypnotic play. Louis looked for Harry to check – for what exactly he didn’t know, but Harry was already in a tickle fight with his cousin, and his smile was as carefree as his shoulders, content and chirpy and almost … used to it. Used to Louis by now.

Louis worried over this. Like some cooked up magic of theirs had just dissipated forever and always. But Harry had just helped create a world for them. And they hung out every day so maybe he wasn’t bored just yet.

 

After dinner, everyone dispersed to their own doings, with Harry, Louis and the boys visiting the bursting life by the canal. It was a 20 minute bus ride, peppered with awful karaoke tries and sneak drinking of the even more awful, snatched cognac.

Niall and Jørgen commented on the theatrical showings. Harry giggled, drinking. "I thought it was cute."

 _Cute_? That's what Louis' mom used to call him. Why would Harry use the same word?

"The ... You'll be servant and I a king-stuff." He explained at Louis' expression. "But a little embarrassing, too. In front of your sister!"

"Oh, I didn't feel embarrassed one bit." Louis said.

“Well, I get easily embarrassed. I blush a lot.”

“Not really.”

“Yeah, if you really knew me, you’d know.”

“I do really know you, and you don’t.”

“Lou, I blush all the time!”

“From what?”

“Stuff people say!”

“What triggers it?” Louis knees hit his as the bus cut a corner.

“Uhm… Nice things people say to me.”

“Like?”

“Like… Compliments.”

“Oh, is that what you meant! I had no idea what you meant by ‘nice things people say to me.’”

Harry grabbed his thighs and leaned in for a high-pitched screech of laughter. “I mean, when … when it’s sincere and not about … colours of the eye or a nice smile or cute shirt …”

Louis quirked an eyebrow. “Oh, you’re one of those high maintenance ones? Preferably people would compliment the depth of your soul and the galaxies hidden in the wells of your eyes?”

“ _Some_ one has read my diary.” Harry winked.

"It's true. He has one." Niall confirmed flatly.

 

They arrived the docks.

A guy had gone for a swim in the fountain, now scorned by a police control. They were all laughing, though, so Louis figured it wasn’t too bad.

In hunt for a convenience store and cigarettes, they stopped by the Royal Library, situated straight by the canal. A kebab shop held open, only 50 DKK for a large menu. A kiosk lurked suspiciously behind it, selling candy and fags for a crowd by the canal. A live concert situated by the quay siding the Library.

They walked toward the crowd as the song changed to one of purely piano; the three guitar players rested. A woman's voice sung. Heads billowed left and right in silent enjoyment. The lyrics were a manifest of how love was hard and ended in misery. Louis laughed to himself, swivelling to look up and the soft-looking woman. “’Cause you’re already spoken for!” he sung, screechy and blissful and caught in the wires of a flower decoration.

She smiled at him, closing her eyes. 

Louis giggled. How funny his thoughts turned during concerts. Or due to any song, really. He’d tried jotting down his thoughts when in this state of reverie, but the mornings after he always read it as awkwardly phrased.

Like now; he was thinking about the universe. It didn’t seem big enough just now. Or maybe that’s what it did. Too huge. A suffocating darkness to his frail human light. A snuffed out candle with an embarrassingly jittery ember. And right now, in this profound and unfamiliar moment, he just needed someone to say, “There is more, we promise.” “It is worth it, we swear.” "We got you. Hang in there. This isn't everything your life will be about.”

He also needed someone to say even stranger things. Things he had no clue why had popped up at the very forefront of his mind.

“He loves you. He’ll always love you.”

He snapped awake. He’d fallen to a floating dock jutting out from below the quay. “Louis!” Someone clung to Harry’s heels as he scampered for Louis’ arms. But Louis was fine. Honestly, he hadn’t even felt the fall.

“Are you alright?”

He guffawed. "Yes?"

The girls looked at him strangely. Half giggling, half judgmental. A young, drunken prince. Where were his guards? His chaperones?  And wasn't he 13 or something? The last in line of any valuable royal title, and the love child of a sexual escapade no one - not even fervent, Danish gossip magazines - mentioned.

 _Excuse me for not being perfect,_ Louis fumed. God, he was tired of this entire day. He knew it had been fun, yet never felt it. There had been too many people. Interference of all unidentifiable sorts.

“Do you want to go home?” Harry said.

Louis hesitated. He knew Harry wanted to stay. “No. Or, maybe. But I can get home on my own. Don't think cognac's for me, really,” he tried a laugh.

“I’ll go with you.”

“No, I mean it. Stay. I'll call Max and he'll be here in a minute.”

“Don't call him, I'll go with you. See you later, err ... girls! I’m not good with Danish names.”

They giggled, as if it was a charming streak. “It’s fine, Harry. We know where you live.” They winked, doing the gesture of tipping a pretend-hat.

Louis couldn’t get away fast enough. 

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title based off lyrics from Confessional Song by Elin Gaustad. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1uTSCLeXHY)
> 
> //I don't know if you know by now  
> But I kind of hope that you don't  
> Cuz' you're already spoken for  
> And I'd be a fool to ask for your love
> 
> Is it all in my head, in my head  
> Is it all in my head, in my head//


	13. honey, i'm on fire

Louis was a vertical blotch in the low-lit woodland. Burgeoning lilacs from each side of the road interfered with his frame.

The blotch halted, twisted and waved Harry over. The whole walk towards Louis' home had been a sobering experience from beginning to end.

“Why are you breathing so heavily?”

“Er – alone in a dark forest with no way of knowing where I came from or where I should go?” He was still tipsy, mind you.

“It’s just the woods.” Louis shrugged, offering what Harry gauged a sad smile. “You won’t get lost. I’d find you.”

Harry stilled as well. Even the gravel on the dirt path was eerily serene. “I’m more comfortable at sea than on land, I think.”

"Well, it’s your natural habitat.” Louis exhaled with his nose. The sound of an inert laugh.

“Yeah. But I wouldn’t mind mainland for a bit.”

“Just for a bit?”

“Maybe a long bit.”

Louis nodded, then flung his arm out to stop Harry from walking any further. "Can you hear that?"

"The sound of me shitting myself? Don't shock me like that!"

"So sorry, really," Louis guffawed and stroked Harry's chest in quick, four circles. "Just thought I heard something."

"I see fire over there," Harry tip-toed.

"Probably remnants of Midsummer bonfires. I wonder how many people are there."

"What if it's a cult doing ritual massacres?"

"Come on, brave and experienced sailor." Louis shook his head and guided the way through moist and haphazard bush land - drizzle was in the air - and the closer they got to the fire, the louder the harmonica and guitars became.

 

The bonfire was massive. Orange tentacles devoured the low temperature and shot embers into the barren sky. It was an ample group of people there. Some were dancing, others playing, eating, kissing.

At the backside of the fire was a narrow and wonky pier. Kids scampered around it, holding hands with their parents and eating smores. Without catching attention, Louis snatched a pair of towels from the ground, soppy with wet sand, and sprinted to the end of the pier. Harry dared nothing but to follow.

Harry would never overestimate northern summers again; body going frigid as they removed all clothing and advanced into the water. No one appeared to take notice of them; people were too busy enjoying midsummer and celebrating with their loved ones.

 

Harry’s body'd left him with a sensation of feeling numb and far-off, as if his torso wasn’t submerged in a freezer-like condition but hovering somewhere damp right above the surface. Breathing in rugged, trying inhales. _Hah._ His nose whistled. _Of course I’m breathing_. _Of course I’m alive._

He plunged backwards, basking in a three-second freefall before caught by the backbone of the sea. Louis dipped his head, wheezed, and crawled frantically.

The drizzle paused and began and paused and began, offering peeks of a starlit sky.

Harry took in the scene.

It was a vivid, 3D motion of curves hid by fog, feet advancing in tentative steps up the ice cold steel of a ladder, mixed with a cackle that rippled through the silver lit air. Once back up at the pier, Louis tucked a towel about his neck which obscured the majority of his frame. He was still silver, though.

Still shivering.

Maybe this is what it meant to be in a bubble, Harry thought. When people say they’re in a bubble with someone. But maybe other people have to be present for it to be a bubble at all? How could they know they weren’t just in a random bubble simply because there was no one else to have a bubble with?

Louis' laugh sounded from afar, calling Harry to join him on the pier for a view of the ocean further out.  But Harry knew Louis was a bit of a cold Danish frog, reluctant about playing in the unforgiving, arctic water.

“Pussy!” Harry hollered and swum forward.

_This is to be alive. We're alive._

“Mermaid!”

“Mermaid?”

“Merman, then!” Louis knit the towel cross his waist. It hugged him all the way to his soles and didn’t look to allow as much as a finger between. “Oh, merman, merman!" he perked his bum to the planks. "Where art thou? I am a merman too, and all alone in the sea!”

“That’s crazy!” Harry cackled and ingested a mouthful of water. “I’m all alone, as well!”

He drove on by the itch of his feet, heels kicking violently into the soft stream, pedalling steadfast and onwards. Everything felt crazed, especially the sky behind Louis; a crescent moon crowned his wet hair in the light rainfall. Like a futuristic music video.

“ _Uahh_!”

The towel unfolded like the crepe paper of a bouquet, landing atop his head beneath the water.

By the strength of his elbows, Louis emerged to conquer Harry’s collarbones, pulling them both underwater. Harry tickled him, inducing ghosts of spectral fingers around Louis' waist causing him to go all twitchy. “Harry, no!” he guffawed. “Stop!”

"Sorrynotsorry." Harry grinned. Droplets trailed down the sections of his teeth and into his mouth.

Louis front crawled back to the pier just in time before Harry'd catch his ankles.

“My prince,” Harry japed, swivelling a make-belief hat off his head.

“My peasant,” Louis laughed.

“At your service."

“Really? Well, my servant. Have you remembered all the harvest?”

“Yes! Sure!”

“And the ...”

Harry’s eyes set on his.  "And ...?”

“I’ve no idea.” Louis guffawed. “I don’t know what I want you to remember.”

“Have you ever seen a real life heart?” Harry rattled his head to let the water out, glancing at Louis. Drying their bodies was a feeble attempt, growing cold once more by the moisture of putting their moist clothes back on.

"Uh - _no_?" he rolled his eyes, knowing full well how he'd had that exact wonder 24 hours ago.

“Me neither." The star-speckled shine of the water had taken hold of Louis’ eyes. Nothing was blue anymore. "I think it's very vein-y."

Like the white foam framing the waves, Louis' eyebrows framed his eyes and nose. His lips were thin strokes on a coal-grey sketch. The details were overwhelming. Like maybe how art should be.

Then he flexed his neck to look back at the bonfire, hair and profile hit by faraway embers.

And everything was alive.

Everything was in existence.

Harry was drunk and not drunk at the same time. The haphazard jolts of the wind shook his legs to move, and a force pushed him forward in direction of the sea.

Where Louis’ lips were.

Where Louis’ lips met his cheek.

The singular source of warmth brought to realization how cold everything else was. Harry trembled.

“Uhm." His eyes ducked to Louis' hard nipples.

“Pretty cold here.” Louis said, clutching his arms around himself.

The entire ocean roared. Drizzle revisited.

“Do you want to go back?”

Louis had to focus to catch Harry's words, not from the sudden roar off the ocean, but from a pitchy noise in his ears. It vanished quickly. "Y-yes." He said, and they toddled back for steady soil and cackling, intoxicated humans.

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter named after Peter Gergely’s guitar cover of Summertime Sadness (Lana Del Ray). 
> 
> //Honey, I’m on fire, I feel it everywhere,  
> Nothing scares me anymore//


	14. all your bullets richochet

White foam framed the black waves. As they hit the shore, it rushed into the hundreds of vessels of the archipelago that bled into the rocks.

“The swallows fly low.”

Louis' words accompanied with a faraway roar from the east. They had no chance of spotting the density of the clouds, it being 00:04 AM, but in post glow of the midnight sun they could make out thick groupings of gloom in the distance. Forest flies buzzed, the trees' leaves lit blue and exposed in the moonlight. The bonfire gleamed in the distance; they were already halfway home.

They balanced the edge of a shear when a three second long glimpse of an electric spectacle stunned their view. “I saw lightening strike the ocean once.” Harry said, eyes gauging the nature around them. “Like it was swallowed whole and disarmed.”

"I remember being at a tree house once, with this swing set that we used. It was straight above the water. Then the rain came, and one of my friends fell into the water because he used too much force when swinging, and I was so scared! Lightning kills, you know?"

A shift in wind upturned the leaves.

Another blare.

“One ..." Louis counted. "Two ... Three ... Three kilometres away!”

They grinned despite the omen, so enthused that Harry forgot all about the lightening in the sea and the utter urgency it had been to reach the lighthouse. Now something up from earth tinkled their feet, skin charged with the molecules around them.

Louis grabbed his hand that instant, jetting towards the meadow of drooping beanstalks. "Just run!" he sputtered as rain came latching onto his tongue like glue. "I hope you're not really afraid of the dark." His words were a hollow cry.

 

Knees faltering down a slope of oily vegetation, Harry reoriented into the black nothing that was the meadow. Beating in the palm of his hand was Louis', pressing left, right and centre based of which direction he deemed suitable.

Reaching the centre of the pasture, yet a thunder cracked.

Like a shotgun had gone off, they bolted even faster, leftward parallel the land and over to familiar grounds. Harry wheeled halfway over a tiny ditch, falling into it. Louis turned to help him but in doing so he gravitated to the ground as well – yanked by Harry’s lanky fingers.

“Little shit!” He rolled him into the muddy ground, trapping his legs and arms. It wasn’t that he was stronger than Harry necessarily, but Harry didn’t seem to use his force at all, twitching his head in the earth, laughing.

Suddenly, a creak sounded a very short distance away. Not a lightning this time, more like a nearby movement. The blood in Louis’ veins shot to every nook and cranny of his body; he felt like he could expand or faint or float off the ground that instant. It pumped so hard its pulse beat behind his eyeballs. Maybe this was it. Maybe this was when they died.

“Fuck,” he stressed to Harry's ear, scared absolutely senseless.

“I can’t believe you don’t know what jerking is but you say fuck in like, every other sentence.” Harry noted.

The night had grown so suddenly dark it was blinding. Louis couldn't be sure whether he saw the contexture of snowy white or soul-wrenching darkness. An x-ray vision would've solved the issue at once, he huffed, wondering why the human race had seemed to reach this evolutionary standstill where peoples' abilities not only did not enhance but worsened.

Louis rose weightlessly from the momentum, linking Harry’s fingers to the slots of his own and initiating a sprint across the last slot over to his backyard. The porch light was on and they careened to its glow.

“That was creepy.” Louis gasped, crouching to rest his arms to his knees. “Aren’t you scared?” He cast Harry a sideway glance.

“Yeah,” he said, not looking overly terrified. Or maybe that was Harry’s _I’m terrified_ expression. Like he’d seen a unicorn.

“You should stay, there’s no way you’re going back.”

“I should be at the ship, though.”

“Go back at dawn, not now. I’m not letting you go, Harry. Seriously. Don’t go back.”

“But where would I sleep?”

“Why does that matter?" Louis asked matter of factly, wriggling off his soaked sneakers. As did Harry, sensing the night-chilled lawn on his bare feet. By a strange contrast, couples were dancing on a terrace in the distance across the mile-long park.

Harry surveyed a lone maple tree and shook his shoulders. "It doesn't."

 

The living room was icy. Louis threw in a few logs and some dry leaves he’d gathered from the woods outside.

Everything was low-lit, or not lit at all. With Louis' family still in Griswold, they rummaged freely through the kitchen’s cabinets. With no tea boiler, they set water to simmer in a casserole on the stove. Two mugs were placed on the marble countertops. A linen cloth soaked up a spill of the casserole. Brass glinted in stately pendant lights. 

Choosing out a red wine for them in wait of tea, Louis crawled up the sofa, tugging his knees up to his chin and lighting six candles from the difficult angle. Harry turned on the radio to a guitar cover version of some summer hit song.

“We have to blow out the candles before we go to bed.” Harry aimed a finger at him as he bumped into him on the couch.

Louis caught the finger and shoved it back at his chest. “We’re not sleeping yet!”

Harry lay his cheek on the back pillow, laughing. The scarce sources of light helped illuminate the crystal glasses, making the red wine appear as thick, dark blood. Their skin shades of roasted firewood. The white wool blanket on Harry’s side glittered with gold by the cast from all the chandeliers.

“Your eyes are quite blue.” Harry said. “What are mine?”

Louis rolled his eyes. “You know yours are green.”

“I’ve never been sure.”

“It’s your own eyes?”

“Come see,” he relaxed his legs to open, inviting Louis close.

“Ah yeah, I see it now,” Louis inspected. “Crocodile green.”

“What type of blue are yours?” He leaned in. “I think I’ve seen this colour before… But not in any waters… Could be that it’s… April Blue!”

“April Blue?”

“This is clearly the 8 PM April Blue in all its magnificence.”

“Oh my god.” Louis ducked, cheeks reddening under the scrutiny.

“You know. The colour of the sky at that time. That’s the colour of your eyes.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Says Mr. Crocodile Green! Imagine seeing a crocodile in April?”

A gust flew down the chimney, flaring the fire even more. It looked scorching to Harry’s face, and the skin beneath his lashes tugged just slightly. Rain slammed into the veranda door's glass. 

It felt like the seconds slowed somehow, and the time from when Harry got up to fill their cups with orange tea and get back at the couch again felt almost like in a comfortable reverse.  

 

They decided to change into their pyjamas (Harry borrowing Louis' cousins GANT one) and brush their teeth. The feeling of cold didn’t leave, though; the bedroom vacant and chilled.

They huddled in beneath the covers. 

The rustles of sheets sounded more like thunder than crinkling of fabric, and Louis felt his head would burst from being so hollow and loud.

Harry gently stroke Louis’ arm. It felt like the most natural thing in the world to do; like too many nights in their life had been a waste not laying this close to someone as great of a friend.

 

It was OK. It must be OK.

 

Louis turned to face him. But. Harry rustled the sheets again. His feet touched the creaky floorboards and he did a quick peek out the window before rushing to the kitchen.

“Harry?”

Louis floundered after, dodging the jutting threshold into the living room.

“The lights.” Harry’s motions were maniacal, his bare and out of place. “Thought we’d forgotten to blow them out.”

The gramophone lulled Ella Fitzgerald tunes out through the living room upon their return, and for the briefest of moments, Louis’ gaze flicked alongside his chest, falling to an undetectable spot on the wooden floor.

“I did it before we went to the bathroom.” He tried in calming manner, approaching him like he would a frightened rabbit – which he’d done a multiple of times, trying to befriend thee ones in the forest and inform them where to hide from his family of hunters.

Harry’d toddled over for the terrace doors, resting the side of his head against it.

Only half of the rain hit the glass, slapping hello and goodbye with beastly jabs. Harry’s breath fogged it up as he spoke, “OK.”

Louis advanced towards the glass right next to Harry. “Pling plong.” He said, grinning cheekily to lighten the mood.

“Plong pling,” Harry smiled at him. To him.

They stared at one another without flinching. It wasn’t uncomfortable by any means. In fact, Louis could draw closer – close enough to whisk a kiss to his left cheek, and so he did just that.

The rabbit’s heart stabilized.

“Have you been in a fire before?”

“No. Have you?”

“No.”

Harry kissed his cheek, too. “Good.”

“Mhm.” Louis fumbled, eyes boring at their feet who were kind of approaching the other’s and kind of not. Their feet went left and right, sometimes backwards, sometimes side by side.

And Harry kissed him. On the lips.  

 

It was dry and rather hard. Harry backed back. Louis angered by the detraction, and the silliest feeling of him not having been allowed to prepare. His heart had gone all U-turn trying to pump its way up his throat but then Harry kissed yet again, and it silenced all the noises Louis thought had just been there. His heart dropped to normal position.

With his eyes closed, Louis felt the shifting of raindrops light his eyelids, but as he motioned more into the kiss, all got dark under Harry’s shadows and Harry’s hair. He shivered. “You cold?” Harry said, leaning half his body over on Louis. “The fireplace's still hot.”

Louis followed soundlessly. The sofa was still warm from just a few minutes ago. 

"You remind me of a rabbit." Louis laughed, all shaken and thrilled.

"You say the strangest things."

"But it's true. You're like a rabbit."

"Well, do you know what you remind me of?" Harry's lip quirked as he enveloped them in the white blanket. "A typical, blonde, seemingly straight royal person who no one would expect to kiss a guy."

"Oh, do I? Well, you know that's because there's a difference between kissing a guy and a sailor ..." He teased, feelings so utterly pleased about everything in life ever.

"And what's that?"

"Sailors are exciting. Guys are just ... guys."

"So you're kissing me just because I'm a sailor?"

Louis felt nervous, that's for sure, but in his stolen attempts at a peek of Harry, he only saw his profile - never quite meeting Louis' eyes. “ _You’re_ kissing _me_!” He pointed out.

Harry fake-gasped.

“ _Fine._ ” Louis rolled his eyes, 100% unable to retain control of his grin, and kissed him. Which did nothing to dampen his grin. He ducked quickly into the nook of Harry’s collarbone.

“That was my plan, you know.”

“To kiss a typical blonde, straight royal person?”

“And convert him and steal him and get half the kingdom.”

“So that’s what you been doing ... _Ah_!”

Harry’s tongue sucked against the skin beneath his earlobe. Blood shot up Louis’ crotch, thighs on sudden fire, unsure if Harry meant this as friendly mischief or actual making out.

Louis went with the motions and straightened to sit on top of one of Harry's thighs to see if maybe that was OK too. Harry let him.

The roof's unlit light bulb and its wires stared apathetically. The chill of the room still haloed around them, unaffected by any heat.  

"We should go to bed." Louis rasped. "Max sometimes pops by early in the morning for coffee."

"Mm. Morning coffee."

"I've never had it before. I can make us some tomorrow," Louis shrugged, making half a mental note of it.  

 

The bed was worse than ever; pins and needles to their backs. Or, Louis’ back. Harry had adjusted on top of him, save his torso and legs. His fingers trailed testily across his arm, pinpointing different patches of skin. There were jittery motions where neither advanced or retraced. Harry's smile was as wide as Louis', and maybe that was what they were giggling for; for how they're going to do this.

Light breeze cut through the walls, the air a bouquet of dying lily, their knees bony, eyes separated by trillions of atoms and hence a zillion different microscopic universes.

... A kiss seemed utterly impossible. How did people even do it?

Louis took a hold around Harry. Their noses brushed, and everything got dark after that - Harry covering him entirely. 

"You feel so cold," he whispered into his ear, and made of point of placing both his arms beneath Louis', stroking his back in zigzags. His left hand quickly went further, bridging the curve of his bum.

Louis moaned; didn't care how weird a sound it was. His fingers trailed across the hair by Harry’s nape. It seemed so petite there – small twirls of spiralled hair from the time he was a child. They rocked slowly against each other. It felt really, really good, and warm, to be kissed by Harry. The warmest place on earth. They gradually switched position, and Harry allowed a mindless, drunken gaze out the windows. The weather was a mess; the cargo probably bobbing violently. It always seemed so strange to him how stuff could exist out there in the incomprehensible cold universe when he could barely manage a Scandinavian June.

He reached for Louis’ hair to have something to hold on to while he sunk and rose and lost his mind.

_Maybe we are King and King… Maybe we are all the things no one has ever been before?_

 

Any nervousness seemed to reshuffle and enforce, supporting their backs, linking their hands.

A hiccup cursed through Harry.

"Mmh ..." Louis giggled, releasing a yawn and hugging him close. Harry closed his eyes, settling in like that for a while.

"Good night, Lou Balloo," he nuzzled into his hair, unsure if he'd just dozed off for a longer period of time. 

“I like it.” Louis sniffed in the scent of Harry’s curls. It smelled of pine and rose hip and heavy blue. Thank God it had been no more sounds coming from the scary forest. “Like something Disney would cook up.”

“Disney _did_ cook it up, Louis.”

“Oh. Well, shush, and good night Smarty Pants.”

“Good night, Princess.”

 

They sunk in mirrored positions, falling surprisingly fast asleep.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from sentence in David Guetta's Titanium - guitar version (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAg6aphicBA)
> 
> //I'm talking loud, not saying much  
> I'm criticized but all your bullets ricochet  
> Shoot me down, but I get up
> 
> I'm bulletproof, nothing to lose  
> Fire away, fire away//


	15. pretty face

Harry’s palms reached to dab sleep off his pillow-crested face. Squinting, he saw a tray of croissants, wiggly jam, butter and steaming tea. “We’ve overslept.” But wasn’t oversleeping supposed to leave that tranquil, albeit panicky feeling? Harry could barely hoist his eyelids half up. It was a task. A bodily combat. “It’s 7:45,” Louis adduced to his tumbled expression. “Don’t you remember our plan? Harry-y,” he nuzzled into his side. “Harry, today we are supposed to try out coffee.”

Louis rose and did a quick peek out the windows. The outline of his lank body absorbed in the light outside, and Harry couldn’t make out Louis’ face as he returned toward him. He stretched his legs over Harry to sit atop him. “Did you sleep well?”

“Very well. And you?”

“Like a rock.”

“Good.”

“Good.” Louis motioned from side to side in tiny waves. "You ... you do remember last night, right?" He said, suddenly rigid.

"I do." Harry gauged it appropriate to give his bum a little squeeze.

"I've got coffee and breakfast for us," he leaned in and kissed his cheek. "We could go have it on the terrace?"

 

They huddled in close in a lambswool blanket, their Arabian coffee-filled cups leaving a hot mark on the glass table.

Rain drummed the awnings. A few droplets went off path, hitting their beverages.

Louis made a face and twitched, a peachy pink rose petal swivelling down beside his left thigh. “Disgusting!” He'd miscounted the balance of the water and coffee beans to a misfortunate degree.

“Sorry, but I agree.” Harry gazed out at the torrential downpour. "What do you want to do after this?"

“We could find a water to swim in until our bones spasm?”

" _Swim_?"

"This can be our no limit day!"

Harry laughed and raised his mug in the air.

Louis gagged, “Fuck, it's horrible.”

“Can’t take it down?” Harry teased him.

“Of course I can.” He gulped down the rest. “See?” he said with triumph and disgust. “All gone.”

Harry prolonged the drinking of his own – but all he needed was one more minute and they could go do something else.

They met with Jørgen, Niels and Niall by the docks, oddly enthused about swimming in the rain - Niall even suggesting skinny dipping.

"Nothing like skinny dippin' at night, though," Niall claimed.

"You know," Louis said, "you can find any night or any ocean, but it doesn’t make you live more."

Harry stared at him. Louis could go so sombre at the most unexpecting of times. In fact, his and Louis' conversations mixed like a talk between best friends and then not friends at all, but something different they didn’t know what was. Louis’ older sister had asked them about it at the party yesterday, of how they knew they’d be best friends before they'd even made a conversation. “We don’t know why it’s like this,” they had said to her.

 _But it feels a lot like freedom_ , Harry often thought. _Maybe we are being free together._

They had a last dip, seconds long, shivering their way back again and sharing an extra large milkshake from Bob's booth. The day was still too chilly for any further shenanigans. 

 

As they parted, it was an equally big and long a hug from everyone. They'd all known of this date, treated it like a distant _whatever_ , because of course the cargo would head out for international waters. It was actually overdue; no one assumed they'd stay even 'til Midsummer.

"Weird to leave." Niall said, leaning John Travolta-ish on the railings of the gangplank and with a cigarette to boot.

"Weird to see you go." Jørgen countered, growing affected at the significance of the event.

Harry and Louis, rather, said nothing. Glances were exchanged, naturally, and a final pat on the back let the other go.

"Bye," Harry said further down the gangplank, turning for a final wave at Danish mainland.

"Bye," said Jørgen and Niels in unison.

Then Niall and Harry boarded.

 

*

 

"You're lucky we're halfway between the Balearic and the Thyrranian, boy," Opie growled. His reeking mop banged against his crouched feet beneath their kitchen table. "What the hell where you thinking? What the motherfucking hell?"

"Aye, what's the noise?"

Awful Archibald trudged into the common area.

Opie merely lifted the greasy oilcloth.

Despite all the air clearly whooshing out of Archibald that very second, there was a striking flash of something fiery in his eyes. He must be pretty annoyed, Louis assumed. With a cackling sound he turned on the heel of his pegleg and plodded up the ladder for the berths.

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter named after Young and Beautiful by Lana Del Rey, guitar version. 
> 
> //And all the ways I got to know  
> your pretty face and electric soul//


	16. the hope I have

**September 3d, 2016**

 

He stared out at the trees. Blued webs and stars between the branches.

A croak sounded behind. The cut of someone staring a hole in his spine.

"So you're back."

A breath not of fresh air but of worn places tugged at Harry’s skin. "Mhm."

“Never thought I'd see you again." Louis caught his breath. The run had been long; after all, he wasn't even sure if it was Harry that he'd seen.

Now the waves howled against them. He saw them so closely that it didn’t remind of waves anymore. Couldn’t be sure because of the fog, the state, or the perception of things. Because it was ten years since last time. And it really shouldn’t matter anymore. Now that they weren't young and foolish, or drank coffee for the first time and kissed crushes and had perfectioned their ability to produce masterpiece omelettes. Not now. It doesn’t matter _now_.

"Got the letters in a pocket in my backpack." Harry said statically. "The pictures we took."

Light breeze disarranged his hair. Dark air clad his cheekbones, cascading down his bobbing throat. 

"If you remember them?"

Louis' chest stirred at the low-key sarcasm, at once helpless to the storm of fury blowing up in him. "No, I have no idea. Have we met? Did we travel together some place, some time? Did I leave my entire family and friends and school for you? Risk absolutely everything just to be able to hang out with you more?"

"Who asked you to?"

"Fuck y-" No, Louis wouldn't buy into the victim playing card. No, he wouldn't cry out of pure anger the way he always did if something triggered him too much; like corrupt court systems and animal cruelty. "I've no idea why I did it? Young and dumb and caught up in all sorts of stupid shit and half-assed ideas everyone knows wouldn't go anywhere?"

"Nothing was half-assed, nothing suggested it wouldn't work."

"Every idea we had was just some silly daydream."

“They weren’t fucking silly to me,” Harry wailed. “They were plans we made, realistic overviews of the days and weeks and years ahead. Idiot, Louis!”

So it was still so, Louis thought, that the harshest thing exiting Harry’s mouth was ‘idiot’. Louis’d expect at least bloody annoying and prick by now, and found himself choke a laugh. But nothing about this was humorous. He wasn’t sure why his mind wouldn't latch onto that.

In the confusion lay a ringing, unmistakeable hole. His contorted face couldn’t compete with it. His laugh couldn’t humour it, his heartache couldn’t trump it. It was a new but primal pain. Like a live display of a grieving process, of a deceased person coming back to life before your very eyes, rubbing in how you've lost them forever. And the anger.  The anger threw him out of left field; he had no idea where it came so violently from. Why was he angry? They’d both left that day. They’d both given up. They’d both realised. Both said goodbye.

They hadn’t though.

Louis’d curled to the floor of the car he was pushed into once at Copenhagen's harbour, and refused to ever rise again to the point of Max carrying him into his room; flashlights from the press' cameras catching his red, blotchy face just in time for the 9 o'clock news.

God.

They hadn’t said goodbye.

They hadn’t given up.

The plans fused the air around them. He remembered Harry’s writing. Letters stamped Indonesia. Taking the time to think about Louis, dedicating time to update him on every little thing. The stories had been so rushed, so alive with it, that it exceeded every single page, letters spilling onto the folder and sometimes the café tables. And somehow that was the hardest to digest; it still being alive. It never having left. Harry being there. Speaking. Reminding.

“I felt I wanted everything.” Harry’s lips jerked downwards without his will.

Either a tear or snot trickled down Louis’ lips. He touched it. _Tears then._

“And that you didn’t.”

“I did.” It was a croak. “Of course I did.” Waves of loss overthrew Louis in intervals. This sorrow wasn’t supposed to be stored in him. Not in his subconscious, not in his heart. In memory, sure. Memories were memories. Though he didn’t remember those fully either. Harry was a dark-headed youngling with large, green eyes and skin you’d think would bruise for every brush but never did. It only blushed and reddened and breathed.

It was sweet in its gawkiness, soft somehow, and open to touch. Always open to touch.

They had gone swimming at midnight and kissed in the mornings. They’d reeked of teenage sweat and rhododendron safaris. Harry had told him every single dream he’d ever had (which he wrote down in the thickest journal Louis’d seen to date) and then he had told him his real life dreams, things he wanted to accomplish in life.

“I want to accomplish those things too,” Louis’d said. And they had shook hands and giggled and strolled towards a concert in Sydney and burnt their skin because they were freezing after the freak snowstorm in Swaziland and didn’t notice the sharp rays through the worn ozone layer. Louis had gazed at the band's big screen, seen stags and ships and spiralled bear shapes. Violet and green and a red that wasn’t red. He had held Harry’s hand. They had kissed each other raw. Fallen in the shrubs they’d hid in. Seen the Milky Way from upside down, looking part of the Opera from their horizontal position, and the cold was hot and the hot was cold, every single thing existing because they were holding hands; because they were teenagers in love forever.

 

Fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck.

 

Harry's eyes grew darker. Face stuck in a tired expression. Hairline devil-horned. "'m ... I'm sorry for everything." He said, stance still stoic and unmoveable. "That I didn't go back for you."

"It really hurt when ... They were all these parties, you know. And I felt like everyone liked you and that you liked them back. And that it would only be a question of time before you'd fall in love with someone else. Someone in Germany or ... South Africa or wherever. So when I was found by the search crew, it felt like a strange relief somehow. That finally I wouldn't have to risk seeing you with someone else. Because I ..." Gosh, how would he say this. Most of all; how on earth could it be that he never _had_? "I was in love with you, you know."

He noted an East Anglia cargo bobbing from afar.

Caught the scent of lilacs.

Harry walked over to him in only two steps; Louis was sure that for himself it would be four. They were helpless. It was helpless. A mess. Harry stroke away Louis’ fringe before placing his hand back into Louis’ again. It looked like Harry had something to say, lips filled to the rim with letters and spaces. Tears lined his eyes. Spit glistened off his lips.

Sad. Everything was horribly sad.

"Come," Louis said, trekking down the rugged landscape. Certain patches proved more slippery than what he'd imagined, but he heard Harry trudge on behind him, and they made it wordlessly and safely to the other side, down by the harbour where they first met.

 

"I just ..." Louis roved about in semi-circles, quickly panicking over the restricted, remaining space to move. "Why did you come back?" he asked and swallowed hard.  "Like ... I didn't know- I thought you wanted to stay at sea forever. That the whole thing was yours, in a way. That you have the whole sea, you know." 

“Well, you’ve kind of got the whole country,” Harry countered, spinning around with arms open, gaze landing on the gentle rippling of the sea – wondering why or when he’d ever loved it.

Louis rolled his eyes and quirked his lips. He could tell when Harry was trying to be disarming; it had always left a warm, enveloping feeling in his bones. It was more than welcoming. "I don't ever want to rule this country in any way, shape or form."

"Denmark can be ruled in different shapes?"

A second eye roll.

"Because Denmark's a country, so. How could you have ruled it in different ways anyway? In different shapes and forms?"

A third. "Boy, how I've missed you."

Harry'd observed how Louis'd kept his tears in check some minutes earlier. Now he felt some of his own, feeling not like tears but like strange, little bubbles. They stung like sandpaper. A marble game with marble sandpaper.

He decided to hurry and hug Louis before he'd see.

Shocked, Louis winced, face flinching away from his, but body standing quiet and wondering, falling into the embrace. "Harry," Louis said, to create an actual noise. Something to affirm it wasn't some illogical, drunken mirage. The motion squeezed out a few teardrops, and Louis ducked to see them land on the asphalt below. He imagined it falling into the sea, salt to salt. The redundancy was evident; like rainfall over a flood. "Harry," he said again.

The only way to be closer would be to rub blood with blood, or sew a finger pad into the other’s skin and that was impossible. Very grotesque. An odd thing to contemplate on. _Had it been raining_ , Louis' mind searched desperately for anything medial. But it hadn’t. It'd been dry for weeks.

Harry thumbed away a few tears down Louis' cheeks like it didn't matter, like it wasn't sad.

“When did you come back?” Louis spilled an embarrassing trail of spit at his shirt. Couldn't stop the reactions his body gave off.

"Late July."

"Late July ..."

"Yeah."

"Where've you stayed?"

"A hostel in town. By the Meat Market."

"A hostel."

"Mhm."

"Do you remember the one in Laos? In Vientiane?"

"Our fight."

"Yeah." Louis giggled. "He was well fit, though."

"He was the worst human I've ever seen."

"No-o. He was super nice. Got me so many drinks. And then you took off."

"Well, I didn't want to stand and watch you get all lovey-dovey with the grossest guy."

"You _know_ I'd never get lovey-dovey with him. Anyway, all you did was buy a kebab and get lost in a few streets up. And then you puked and I had to find you and get you home, and I got you water and charcoal tablets."

"And then you kissed me. Just how awful did I smell?"

"Actually, kind of bad."

He sensed the rumble of Harry's chuckle.

It had felt second nature. Wherever Harry was, Louis'd gravitated towards it. Like with the ocean. If that was Harry's home, then Louis was there too automatically. By reflex. By law. By the way things were.

"Follow me home?"

No rumble save the deafening wind of Skagerrak.

Harry let go of the hold.

 

*

 

They didn’t speak until arriving at an ornate building connected with a string of larger estates. A bumble bee roamed the closing cherry blossoms, glowing before the dying lamp of a night lantern. Harry couldn’t remember if they had used the metro to orientate about Copenhagen, or maybe buses. Or maybe they had just walked for a really long time on many different streets, leading more and more to the centre of things.

 

Louis peeked at him as he nodded to a door attendant and searched his jeans pocket for a golden key to the golden framed door. "Come in?"

Harry hawked and snorted and chuckled to which the guard sent him an analyzing, court look. "Aren't ... Won't the ... Don't y-"

"It has a minibar?" Louis tried as he took the first step in, door wide open.

"Oh, well, sure, then." He laughed.

 

True enough, Jack Daniels and Spanish red wine and Swedish vodka all helped stock up the minibar - which wasn't all that mini. A long counter stretched from wall to wall, leaving a slot for someone to enter it and pour the drinks. 

Louis put the TV on. It was a show about Alaskan women looking for love in Miami. Harry ended up laying on his tummy with crossed legs in the air, wondering who would fall in love with who. Rather than opting for alcohol, Louis got them two full glasses of water with some slices of lemon. Harry drank it thankfully. He felt content. Maybe it was the type of happy Louis’ best friends were - offered tasty water and all. A bed for the night and unpresumptuous talks. 

 

Louis yawned after the second commercial and toddled into the only bedroom. Harry hesitated, got up, sat down again, then got up, turning off the TV and the lights. 

Louis'd tucked himself beneath the covers. The curtains were up and the moon shun in. This was by far Louis' strangest experience of going home with someone after a night out. Also, it hurt like hell knowing how close he'd felt with Harry, while now it was like having to get comfortable with each other all over again.

Harry undressed down to his briefs and tucked himself in, deciding not to do anything differently unless Louis told him so.

They lay close in stillness.

"You’re not in bliss from travelling the world," Louis said, either guessing or stating. Just from the lie down, Harry's hair swirled all across itself into a brown, silvered nest. "Have you grown tired?"

Harry didn’t speak.

"I have," Louis went on.

"What of?"

"Life and stuff."

He was still smiling, though, conveying something that made Harry store the night in his memory. "I think it’s empty," Harry confessed.

"Like a void," Louis supplemented.

"Yeah. Like the outside of something. And we are some beings walking about, observing the surface and doing mindless things just to stand it."

Louis cackled. "How we've grown! All the more wiser."

"Yeah," Harry giggled, feeling a bit stupid. Not everything was mindless, after all. Not everything sucked. "Freedom to do what we want is a great thing, though. It's lucky to have freedom."

The grip of the covers went slack, and Louis turned over back to his side and spoke out into nothing, "Isn’t that how it goes ... All good things are wild and free."

Harry gazed at his fringe and bit his teeth together. "Can't see you." He flicked Louis' fringe aside carefully. It would be unnoticeable hadn't it been for the newfound view; Harry's cheeks trembled a slight bit, and his eyebrows arched. It looked like he was in pain. Then he leaned in on Louis’ neck and buried there.

He took hold of Louis' entire back, stroking him up and down.

Harry had appeared so tall and slender from afar, but up close he was so narrow that Louis could fold around him easily with no effort at all. He could feel the deer-limbed thighs and the breaths from the average-sized lips, the clutching from the abnormally skinny, long fingers and most of all … Most of all … No, he didn’t know. He didn’t know what it was that overthrew him. Was it the nuzzling, perhaps. Harry shoving him ever so slightly onto the mattress. Harry laying over him, pressing thumbs. Harry kissing him.

Louis’ memories had been correct – because this is how it had felt like. This was right. _Yes._

Harry sucked tight on his neck, down to the collarbones before he pulled up Louis’ shirt, inching down soundlessly to kiss his stomach.

The window wiggled with the passing winds flew by outside.  Louis opened his eyes in a haze, his left hand clasped on the chilly wall. He fixated on his fingernails for some reason. Harry’s mouth was hot on his cock, separated by the fabric.

_Fuck._

Bare moans was barely audible. He left a trail of hickies to his inner thighs, to which Louis’ hips jerked automatically, and Harry could slip a hand beneath his briefs. He kept kissing his thighs doing so. It drove Louis close to crazy.

"Are we seeing each other again?" Harry said.

"Yes, yes."

Harry came up to bite his earlobe, "When?"

"When you want … Everywhere … Coffee or dinner or whate-"

Harry bit again. His sharp teeth hurt worse than it hurt good. "Is this OK?"

"Mmh …" he gasped.

Harry cupped his cock in his palm, "Feels like you like it."

 _God_.

Harry's hand went inside the underwear, stroking Louis' shaft gently; Louis could feel Harry's cock rub against his knee. He couldn't see any of it, though; the room cast in darkness as the moon traced the gravity of the sun, turning.

He did hear the tear of a plastic packet, though, smell of slick condoms, the touch of himself getting slicked up with lube, felt Harry squeeze his way into him, back and forth extremely slow …

Louis tried groping his wrist but slipped, then he twitched weirdly on his back and trembled too much, jerking himself up just to get more; to feel more.

"I’ll come if you do that." He clutched Louis tighter with one arm on his shoulder and the other on his hips, but fucked faster. _There_ you are, Louis thought. Skin and all, face and breath. Harry gave a sloppy, wet kiss. It might have been the missing piece _._

"If you do that then _I’m_ gonna come." Louis replied, slotting their hands together and laughing. "Need you a bit more-" he said, slightly wrecked. It was a matter of fact, though. He did need him.

"Yeah?" Harry laughed, eyes closed all along – and kissed him some more.

The closer they got to coming, the softer became the lips – easier to manage. Sweeter. Brushing.

"Fuck, yeah," Louis gasped. "Yeah …"

Louis’ mouth caved at the last bit, coming in erratic spasms against Harry’s torso. Harry kept kissing him though, tried flicking up Louis’ tongue with his own to get a proper French finish as he came. But Louis could barely muster up the strength to wisp his lips and peck, reassuring and affirming – like soothing something burnt at the edges. So it was the tenderness that had Harry come. The barely-there notion of someone he’d loved, and love and would love forever. This was how it felt like. What it was all about, maybe why he was born, why Louis was born. At the same time, the same world. It wasn’t possible that that happened out of nowhere.

"Now you’ve promised," said Harry, heaving up from him, barely in a haze and eyes clearer than before they came to the party, had drinks, before the woods and before now.

Louis laughed, and stroke away the hair from his sticky forehead. "That we'll meet up again?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah. I want that."

"Sweet."

"So …"

"So."

"So finally."

Louis laughed, and pulled him back, kissing his right shoulder.

"Fucking finally."

 

*

 

_Felix went elegantly dressed in silk and velvet, with bare knees, after the English style. “The poor child will freeze!” said the family in the garret. Peer had trousers that came down to his ankles, but one day his clothes were torn right across his knees, so that he had as much of a draught, and was just as much undressed as the merchant’s little delicate boy. Felix came with his mother and wanted to go out; Peer came with his, and wanted to go in._

_“Give little Peer your hand,” said the merchant’s lady. “You two can talk to each other.”_

_And one said “Peer!” and the other said “Felix!”_

_Yes, that was all they said that time._

_Lucky Peer - Hans Christian Andersen_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title inspired by lyrics from Last Hope – Paramore, piano version
> 
> //And the blood in these veins isn't pumping any less than it ever has  
> And that's the hope I have, the only thing I know that's keeping me alive//


End file.
